Wild Lilies: Book One of the NOLA Shifters Series Read online

  Table of Contents

  Wild Lilies

  Copyright Page

  Dedication Page

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Wild Lilies

  Book One of the NOLA Shifters Series

  Angel Nyx

  Angel Nyx Publishing, LLC

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidences are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright 2017 by Angel Nyx. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Angel Nyx Publishing

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs

  This book is dedicated to my mother, Wanda Lu Arendes Blackwell. She always taught us to chase our dreams no matter how far we had to follow them or how long it took to reach them. My one regret is that I did not chase mine hard enough, or far enough, before she left this world. She passed away in 2010 and the world became a little less bright. This one is for you, mom. I love you.

  Foreword

  The NOLA Shifters Series is set in the Louisiana Bayou. Many of the character you will meet are Cajun. Their speech patterns reflect this. Too often, authors are leery of using a dialect that is specific to an area or to a group of people. I feel it would be an insult to anyone who is Cajun for me to make my characters Cajun while having them speak perfect English. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse into their world!

  Also, as the characters are shifters, there may be situations that wouldn't normally arise in a romance novel. The pull of a mate is something that is intrinsically written into their DNA. It is not something that can be fought or controlled. When a shifter meets their mate, the attraction is immediate and intense. As such, they may find themselves doing something that they never expected, even something that goes completely against their own moral code.

  Table of Contents

  Wild Lilies

  Copyright Page

  Dedication Page

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “You will choose a mate by the next full moon or I will do it for you.” Magnis Quinn gave his daughter a hard look.

  Lily lifted her chin and glared at her father. “Don’t make me do this, father. Please. I don’t feel drawn to either one of them; how can you demand I take someone I feel little for as my mate? How can you demand I spend my entire life in a loveless, passionless bond?” She knew he’d not faced that himself. He and her mother were true mates who’d loved each other fiercely, and her father still felt her loss five years after she’d been killed by a human who’d thought she was a regular wolf.

  “That is irrelevant, Lily. As daughter to the Alpha, you have a duty to your pack, one you will honor. Make peace with that and make your choice. They’re good men. They’re dominant, strong, and loyal. Either one would make a good mate for you. As my only child, you are heir to the pack, unless I’m challenged for Alpha by one of the younger males and lose. You have no other option but to choose one of them and start a family. You have one week.” He gave her a dark look and walked out of the house to tend to pack business.

  Lily watched her father leave. She knew he would be gone until the wee hours of the morning. There were several wolf shifter packs in the area around Slatefall, Montana, and sometimes tensions rose between them, leading the Alphas to come together to smooth things over. Earlier in the evening there was a fight between a member of her pack and a neighboring pack, and her father was off to make sure there were no lasting resentments, especially since the other wolf got the worst of the fight.

  “Like hell am I going to spend the rest of my life unhappy.” In that moment a plan formed in her mind. If he wouldn’t listen to reason, then the only real choice she had was to leave. She quickly packed as much clothing as she could shove into two bags, grabbed the photo of her mother she kept next to her bed, slung the messenger bag that had her wallet, car keys, and various odds and ends in it over her shoulder, and slipped out of the house. The sooner she left, the better. She would have to get a fake ID, but that wouldn’t be too hard. There were lone shifters who could give you a completely new identity if you had the money to pay for it. Thanks to her mother having the foresight to make sure she had a life insurance policy, with a high payout, listing Lily as the beneficiary, she had the money for it.

  Lily took one last look at the house she’d grown up in before she squared her shoulders, slid into her car, and drove off into the night. She didn’t have a destination in mind. She would decide later; for now she just needed to put as much distance between her and Slatefall as she could before her absence was discovered.

  Chapter One

  Declan

  “I’m done.” Declan knew those words would get a reaction from his boss. For the last fifteen years he’d been a wolf without a pack. That was about to change.

  “What the fuck do you mean you’re done? We’ve already lost over half the team. You’re team leader, you can’t just walk away.”

  “Watch me.” He leaned on the desk and locked eyes with his boss. “I’ve spent the last fifteen years killing and I’m done. I can’t do this shit anymore. It’s easy for you to say ‘Think of the team’ when you’re not the one with blood on your hands.

  “Every single one of those animals you killed deserved it. You know that as well as I do.”

  “That may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact my hands are covered in blood while yours are still lily white. A man can only take so much before he cracks.” Declan stared his boss down. He knew the man didn’t have the balls to try and stop him from walking away.

  “I can’t change your mind, can I?”

  “No.”

  “Fine, but I want you to appoint a new team leader before you’re relieved of dut
y.”

  “That I can do.” If he’d known it was going to take a month to find his replacement, he might not have agreed.

  “You’re really leaving?”

  “I’m really leaving.” Declan was packing his bag for the last time. For more than twenty years, the barracks the team lived in had been his home. During that time, he’d watched other soldiers tire of the violence that had surrounded their lives. In the last few years, he’d said good-bye to several members of his team who’d been there with him damn near from the beginning. They’d all decided it was time to return to the boring life of the everyday citizen. It was a decision he’d never held against them, and one he’d never thought he’d be making himself.

  “You’ll be missed. This is the second team I’ve been on and I gotta tell you, you’re a better team leader than the last one I had.”

  Declan glanced at the younger man who’d undoubtedly drawn the short stick from the group and had come to ask if he really was leaving the team for good. “Some people can be assholes. The tiger that’s taking my place is a good soldier. He’ll do right by the team.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, looked around the barracks one last time, and made his way to the door. One chapter of his life was finally ending and a new one was beginning

  Declan Monroe was barely eighteen when he left his home in Slatefall, Montana to join a Special Ops group comprised of people like him. They were shifters: men and women who had the ability to get into places most people couldn’t. Men and women who could take on the worst humanity had to offer. They were trackers, assassins, extractors. Often they went into hostile territory to rescue prisoners of war or individuals who had been kidnapped. He’d killed more than his share of people over the years, and he’d finally had enough. He resigned and returned home to try and live a normal life for the first time since he’d become an adult.

  Home. Everything had changed. His folks were dead and his younger brother’s irresponsibility left the house in shambles. He wanted to kick his brother’s ass for letting the house and land get in such a sorry condition. Instead, he focused on repairing the damage done by years of neglect. It gave him something to do to keep his mind off the things he’d done for so many years. Sure, he’d done it for the government. He’d saved lives and rescued innocent people, but he’d taken lives as well. That kind of thing left a stain on a man’s soul.

  A lot of shifters spent their entire lives hoping to find their mate. Declan wasn’t one of them. The kind of life he’d lived, the things he’d done, they’d damaged him in a way no sane woman would want to put up with. It made him a hard man to get along with. He was stubborn, arrogant, violent when the need arose, and he didn’t put up with bullshit from anyone. He was a man who had to be in complete control, and few women, at least among shifters, were willing to give up so much control of their lives to their mate. He was better off slaking his sexual needs with casual encounters and keeping to himself.

  He was hard at work, repairing the front porch of his childhood home, when he heard a vehicle coming up the drive toward the house. He stopped what he was doing and turned his attention to his visitor. He watched as his Alpha, Magnis Quinn, climbed out of his car and approached the house. “Magnis.” He nodded at his Alpha. “What brings you by? Can I get you a beer?” He asked the question as he reached into a cooler to pull one out for himself.

  “Sure.” Magnis waited until he’d taken a big swig from it before he dove into why he was there. “I need your help. Six years ago my daughter, Lily, took off. Until recently I had no fucking idea where she was, or if she was even still alive. A member of one of our neighboring packs was in New Orleans recently, and he thinks he saw her there working at some coffee shop in the French Quarter. I need you to go check it out and if she’s there, bring her home.”

  Declan studied his Alpha for a moment. “Mind if I ask why she took off?”

  Magnis growled but he answered. “She was mad at an ultimatum I’d given her. If I’d known it would make her run, I would have reconsidered it.” He ran a hand through his hair and then rubbed his face before he sighed. “I miss my daughter, Declan. She’s the only family I have, and after we lost her mother, she was the only joy I had in my life. If it wasn’t for Lily, I don’t know that I could have survived losing my mate. Bring her home.”

  Declan could hear the pain, sorrow, and regret in his Alpha’s voice. “I’ll head down tomorrow and check it out. I’ll need a photo of her to show to anyone I question about her. If she’s there, I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her home, don’t you worry.” How hard could it be to convince one female to return to the pack? There weren’t any wolf packs in New Orleans; hell there was only one pack that he knew of in all of Louisiana, and it was on the other side of the state near Texas and Arkansas, too far away for her to interact with any of them. She was bound to be missing the feeling of safety that came from being in a pack.

  How fucking hard was it to find one damn woman? In a city like New Orleans, with so many coffee shops littering the French Quarter, a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. He’d been in New Orleans for nearly a week now and so far he’d struck out. Every coffee shop he’d gone into and shown her photograph netted the same response: ‘“Sorry, don’t know her’.”

  This was beginning to feel like a wild goose chase. Declan wondered if the wolf who’d claimed he saw her wasn’t making shit up to fuck with the Crescent Peak Pack’s Alpha. It wouldn’t be the first time a rival pack did something like that.

  He’d been working through the French Quarter one street at a time, and the thought that it was a lost cause crossed his mind. He was strolling down Bienville Street and was almost to Bourbon Street when he spotted what, at first glance, looked like a bookstore. Closer inspection told him it was also a coffee shop. Well, hell, the wolf hadn’t mentioned the coffee shop being part of a bookstore but it was worth a shot.

  Declan stepped inside and took a deep breath of coffee-scented air. It smelled wonderful in there.

  “What can I getcha?”

  Declan turned his attention to the older man who spoke. “Black coffee, the stronger the better.” He waited until the cup was put in front of him before he pulled the photo out. “I’m hoping you can help me. I’m looking for a young woman by the name of Lily Quinn. Her family hasn’t heard from her in a while and they’re worried about her. The last they knew, she was supposed to be here in New Orleans somewhere. Have you by any chance seen her?” He set the photo down for the man to look at.

  “I don’t know any Lily Quinn but I know a Lily Harper who looks a lot like dis girl here.”

  Declan watched as the man looked down at the photo then tapped it as he spoke. Years of training to not give anything away kicked in at the man’s words, and Declan didn’t show his excitement at finally getting a break. “Great. Can you tell me where I can find her?”

  “Naw, I can’t do dat. It wouldn’t be right, not knowin’ you. I got more respect for her den dat. But she’ll be in dis evenin’ for her shift if you really need to talk to her.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate that. I’ll be sure to stop by later.” With any luck he’d be headed home in the morning with the she-wolf in tow.

  Chapter Two

  Lily

  Early afternoon sunlight shone down on Lily where she sat curled up on the small wicker sofa she had on her balcony overlooking the street. It was late spring in New Orleans and just starting to reach that warm and sticky time of year she’d come to love. It was funny when she thought about it. You wouldn’t expect a girl who’d grown up where it was normal to still have to wear long sleeves this time of year to love the heat and humidity of Louisiana, but she did. She loved that she could sit outside in just a tank top and thin cotton lounge pants, and not be cold.

  She lived on Toulouse Street, half a block up from Bourbon, the most popular street in New Orleans. From where she sat sipping tea, she could hear jazz music coming from one of the many street musicians who wandered through the Fre
nch Quarter. Lily closed her eyes and let the music wash over her. The sweet strains of the saxophone soothed her nerves on days like today when she awoke from troubled, fitful sleep. It didn’t happen often, not as often as it did when she first left home, but every now and then, she felt an almost overwhelming fear that her father had finally found her and was on his way to drag her back to Montana, ripping her away from the life she’d made for herself.

  It was hard to believe six years had passed since the fateful night she took her own life into her hands and fled her home and her pack. She’d been so afraid when she left, afraid she wouldn’t make it, afraid she’d be caught quickly and forced into a loveless bond, but so far no one from her old life knew where she was, and she hoped it stayed that way. Sometimes she missed her father and missed having a pack to run with, but the alternative wasn’t something she was willing to accept. Especially now that she’d been out on her own and knew that she didn’t need a mate in order to find happiness.

  As time had passed, without any trouble, she’d begun to relax. She was happy with where her life was right now. She had a job she loved, good friends she could call on any time she needed them, and a great guy who treated her like she was a precious gift. True, Keith was human. She didn’t have that intense connection that meant they were mates, but he was funny, compassionate, sweet, attentive, intelligent, and they got along amazingly. That wasn’t to say things were perfect between them, because nothing was perfect. Keith still didn’t know that she wasn’t human. A part of her was afraid to tell him.

  A soft sigh escaped her as she finished her tea. She pushed thoughts of the past out of her mind and focused on the present. She had to leave for work soon, and she needed to get her butt in gear or she was going to be late. Not that her boss, Emile, would give her grief over it but she didn’t like being late. It was a pet peeve of hers her boyfriend, Keith, seemed to find endearing. She had to be at least fifteen minutes early no matter where she was going. He often told her it was one of the many quirks he adored about her.