Free Maggie's Wolves, Part One: A BBW Shifter Romance (Red Mountain Pack Book 1) by Cara Morgan Page A

get close to people when you were hiding the deep dark secret that you were actually a monster. Even Aunt Tildy, who’d taken on the chore of raising her after her parents died, had never been able to get past that. Oh, Tildy had done a decent enough job, providing a roof over her head and enough food to satisfy even Maggie’s monstrous appetite. And Tildy wasn’t even truly Maggie’s aunt, the relation was more distant that, second cousin or third. No one in Tildy’s family had shifted for generations. For the Aldrichs, their true natures were nothing more than an old family legend. Tildy had wanted Maggie to deny that part of herself too. And Maggie had done her best to suppress the wolf while Tildy was still living. Not anymore.
    She used her hands to steady herself as she climbed the steep slope, grabbing hold of a sapling when she felt the loose rock beneath her feet begin to slide. When she finally made it to the top of the ridge, she breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the old stone chimney peaking above tree line. Home. The cabin was a hodgepodge kind of place where old doors had been turned into cabinets and tin scrap metal formed the roof of the porch. It looked as if it might have stood in that same place forever, but it was sturdy, and there was no place in the world she felt more at peace.
    Some of her happiest memories had been spent up here when her parents were still alive. She remembered her father lifting her onto his broad shoulders as they hiked through these woods. Her mother’s shape shivering about her as she shifted from woman to wolf between one running step and the next. Her father had been a shifter too, but her parents were the only shifters Maggie had ever known. If there were more of her kind out there, her parents had never gotten the chance to tell her about them and Tildy hadn’t known of any.
    Maggie hefted her backpack higher on her shoulders and started down the hill. She had to stop several more times before she made it to the trail leading up to the cabin. It was overgrown with weeds even though it had only been a few months since she’d been this way last. The cabin was sound though. The doors and windows shut tight. She unlocked the front door with the old fashioned key she wore around her neck and stepped inside. The cabin was stuffy and dark, but it felt wonderfully familiar. Like being wrapped in a big hug by an old friend.
    She found the lantern hanging exactly as she’d left it. She lit it quickly, and then closed the door behind her. Letting her bag drop to the floor, she stood still for a moment to catch her breath. The walls were bare wood, stained a deep dark brown by age and smoke. Most of one wall was taken up by a great stone fireplace and another by the bed beneath an antique arched glass window. There was another window above the old porcelain sink. A small, but sturdy square kitchen table and a pair of chairs was to her right in the center of the kitchen area. The pantry was an open set of shelves that her father had built when she was a little girl. He’d let her hammer in a few of the nails herself. A metal rack hung from the ceiling holding an assortment of pots and pans. She’d tied a bit of mint there to dry this spring and had forgotten to grab it when she left. She wondered if it was still good enough to make tea.
    She sighed. Tea would have to wait. There was work to do first.  
    The cabin was dry, with no electricity or running water. The outhouse was out back and the well in the yard had a hand pump. The pump shouldn’t be frozen quite yet, and even if it was, she’d have snow soon enough that she could melt for water on the old pot-belly stove.
    Maggie hauled wood from the pile outside and within an hour she was settled. She had a fire burning in the fireplace and the stove was warming. She’d carried fresh water inside and taken care of her personal needs. Her damp clothes were laid out on the stone hearth. She finished off a can of soup