Mate - Part Two: Willow Cove Shifters - The Pack, #5

By Margeaux Nix

I should be planning a party not the rest of my life, yet that's exactly what I'm being forced to do. They say it should be easy, but none of them have had to choose.

Kat – The days leading up to my birthday are more stressful than fun. Instead of picking out what my first legal drink will be, I've been stressing about which of the two alphas will be my mate. My oldest brother has put me in lockdown to prevent one of them from claiming me before I can consent and before my wolf can confirm which is fated for me. And just when I think things can't get any crazier, I'm thrown yet another curveball in the form of new power. Why can't things just be simple?

Nash - After finally getting Kat to agree to a date, I'd thought it would be smooth sailing to our mating. And then he showed up. Not only has he threatened to take my mate, but if I don't drop my claim to her, he has threatened the rest of her pack too. Can I risk the slaughter of so many innocent lives for fate – for love? Or will I be forced to make an unimaginable sacrifice once again, even as I count down the hours until she is old enough to recognize me as her fated mate?

 

With Kat's new magic emerging, will she be able to claim her true fated mate and avoid a pack war? Or will her luck run out before she can make her choice?

 

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 to be released each month of 2022.

Intended for mature audiences 18+ for bad words, bad guys getting what they deserve and good girls learning to be bad with their mates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margeaux Nix
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201425586

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

Kat

A bsolutely not, Ryker growls as menacingly as any alpha, or seriously overprotective older brother ever could. The fact that he’s both makes his threat that much worse. Brad doesn’t seem at all concerned with the threat. That either makes him stupid or reckless. Or, a whole heaping helping of both, and that makes him dangerous.

Axel and I had missed the run with our pack while Brad and his alpha father tried to bargain their way into me accepting a mating agreement. Thankfully, Axel was adamant that no such agreement could be made without Alpha’s approval. We’d come back to Ryker’s house to wait for him to return from the pack run. Unfortunately, that means the four of us witnessed my brother shagging his mate against the front door as soon as they entered the house. Axel and I had tried in vain to get their attention through our pack links, but they’d been lost to the pleasure of their mates. With nothing left to do, Axe and I turned our heads to give them some privacy. Brad had watched intently as if the live-action porno was for solely his enjoyment. The boner he’d gotten wasn’t nearly as impressive as the one I’d felt pressed against me during my date with Nash yesterday.

To say that my brother and his mate were not happy about the intrusion, well...understatement of the millennium. I’m sure that’s why Ryker’s being so surly about everything else. The words had barely left Brad’s mouth before Ryker shut him down.

"I’m sure that we can come to some arrangement," Mr. Stanley says calmly, acting as if he’s here to keep the peace when all he’s doing is enabling his son’s power trip. Then again, he’s never done anything to keep his son in line, or the rest of his pack for that matter. I suspect it’s why his pack is so ...what’s the word? Evil? Yep. That’s the word.

Roxboro pack is pure evil – immoral, wicked, criminal, and a bunch of other words I won’t dare repeat. I’d already known this long before tonight’s stunt. I knew it from the first moment I encountered them when their alpha was running for the Senate. I was but a toddler. If anyone ever tries to tell you that children can’t sense evil, they are wrong. I knew then what I know more certainly now. Roxboro pack is beyond dangerous. They’ve been left unchecked by both their alpha and the council of elders that governs all shifter packs in the country.

"You come into my territory without so much as a courtesy phone call, enter my home without invitation, and lay claim to my mate, and you think I’m going to be open to an arrangement?" Ryker demands, his eyes flashing and his fists clenching. His wolf is so close to the surface that I’m surprised he’s not sprouting fur. I stand from my seat on the couch beside Axel and disappear back the hall. The men in the room are locked in death glares and no one even notices that I’ve left. It makes me wonder if I could disappear as easy to avoid this situation completely.

I duck into Violet and Ryker’s bedroom to grab the deep purple silk robe that Ryker bought Violet the weekend he met her. She was raised human and isn’t as comfortable with nudity as those of us who grew up knowing what we were. Shifters (mostly) enjoy nudity. It reminds us of our animal forms. Poor Vi is still getting used to that. She’s only known she’s a shifter for a few months. It’s why she’s cowering behind Ry at the moment – trying to hide her body from the strangers in her house. Not that I blame her. I’d be cowering too if there were strangers in my house while I was walking around naked.  When I return to the living room, I take her the garment. She slips into it and shoots me a grateful smile.

Thank you! she says through our pack link. Are you ok? They didn’t hurt you, did they?

Not ok, but they didn’t hurt me, I confirm. I don’t need to clarify what I mean. She knows. She knows that Brad Stanley has been harassing me since I was a little girl. She knows he takes every opportunity to remind me that I am an omega, and he is the son of an alpha. To remind me that I am no better than the dirt on the bottom of his shoes or the mud stuck in his claws. She was there to witness it firsthand. She also defended me. That’s when I knew she was perfect for my brother. She didn’t care that I’m last in the pack – she still doesn’t. To Violet, I’m her sister and her friend.

Where’d you get that hickey, Kat? A certain sheriff? Vi smirks at me as I do my best to adjust my hair to keep Nash’s mark covered. I don’t care if my family sees it, but if Brad or his father sees, it could cause serious trouble, given the reason they are here. It’s not nearly as dark as it had been yesterday – a consequence or benefit of the rapid healing shifters enjoy. But Violet’s vision is enhanced by her wolf being close to the surface and she hones in on the mark with an eagle’s acuity.

Not the time, I reply. But soon, yeah? I need your advice.

"Of course. I don’t have to be at the hospital until three tomorrow. We can meet for lunch and gossip."

You won’t even consider it? Brad scoffs, pulling my attention from my pack link conversation with Violet and crashlanding me directly into the mess of reality. "An alpha for an omega. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. And I hate to remind you, but you did take your mate without an agreement in place. That violates our truce by stealing what was rightfully mine. We are offering you a way to avoid a pack war."

Yours? Violet scoffs as her hands clench into fists by her sides. Her sapphire eyes are almost entirely gold now, meaning she is seconds from shifting and tearing this man (and I use that term loosely) to shreds. Both she and Ryker would be well within their rights to kill both Brad and his father. They are trespassing on pack lands, after all. But unlike Brad and his father, my brother and his mate are fair and honorable. Though I wish they were perhaps just a little less honorable right now.

Your mother was selected to mate with our enforcer specifically to bear my mate. We would have grown up together, knowing we would be together forever. Ergo had your mother not run away like a coward, you would be mine.

The room is silent as that information lands like a ticking bomb right in the middle of the room – waiting to destroy everyone and everything