wp_link_pages shortcode for ‘nextpagelink’

Question

wp_link_pages() by default echoes the links (or the output), unless you set the echo parameter to 0 (or false). Secondly, your code is returning an array with nextpagelink as the only item/value.

But anyway, if you just want the link to the next page, the wp_link_pages() wouldn’t be the one you should be using since it outputs all the page links (start, next, previous, etc.).

Instead, you can try this, which works well for me:

function nextpage_shortcode( $atts ) {
    global $page, $numpages, $multipage;
    if ( $multipage ) {
        $i = max( 1, $page );
        if ( $i < 2 ) {
            $text="<span id="next"> BEGIN </span>";
        } elseif ( $i < $numpages ) {
            $text="<span id="next"> NEXT </span>";
        }
        if ( ! empty( $text ) ) {
            $link = _wp_link_page( $i + 1 );
            return $link . $text . '</a>';
        }
    }
    return '';
}
add_shortcode( 'nextpage_short', 'nextpage_shortcode' );

However, you should know that I’m using _wp_link_page() which is a private function. So you might want to copy the source, rename the function (e.g. to my_link_page), and use my_link_page() in the above code.

I hope that helps, and remember that the  tag (i.e. content teaser) is not being taken into account since you’re specifically dealing with the  tag only.