Page 1 of Her Fake Mate

Chapter 1

Mia

Your appeal has been denied.

The words swim in front of my eyes as the familiar burn of tears blurs the letter in my hands.

Of course my appeal has been denied.

I don’t know who the mountain lions paid off at the Supernatural Bureau, but whoever it is, I hope they’re enjoying their newfound riches.

Because of the lions, and because of the way our stupid shifter politics work, my family lost our home. We lost everything, if I’m being honest.

I don’t even want any of the stuff back, necessarily. The cars, the houses, and even all of the farm equipment, can be replaced. The only thing I need are the bonds hidden in the safe buried deep underground. They’re… lucrative.

We held the water rights to our little valley in between Taos and Santa Fe. That’s no joke. And there’s no way that I can get to them. Not with the lions blocking any return to the pack lands we once held. The ones that some of our family died to protect.

Hostile takeovers are technically illegal. In order for a pack to gain territory, it is supposed to approach the other pack, and both agree to file with the Supernatural Bureau. They’re supposed to agree to the change of territory.

Reaching that agreement is where it falls apart.

If a smaller pack says a larger pack is welcome to their land, no one questions it. No one asks if there was coercion. No one asks if the members of the larger pack came in the middle of the night and burned houses down, or if they forced the signature on the agreement at the sharp end of a tooth.

You can file a grievance, a petition to say that you want the land back.

However, there’s only the one agency that regulates the process, and they’re not exactly up to the task. For one, they’re susceptible to bribes. For another, they’re definitely going to believe the word of a big pack of mountain lions over a small family of fox shifters—mostly because they’re comprised of six people, and at least one of them has to be comprised of a stack of mice in a trench coat, because there’s no way they’re real.

There’s no way that my testimony of what the lions did to us is falling on deaf ears.

Not everyone has such a soft heart.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears that are threatening to fall. My mother warned me about this, years ago. That the way I saw the world would just keep making me angry. That the rose-colored glasses I seemed to be born with taint how I see other people. That I’m just a natural sucker.

She was right.

The incident with the lions proves it, and I’m bound and determined to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Hence, why I keep trying to appeal this decision. We’re settled here in the Oakwood pack land, and they’ve been fine. Briony, their social worker, has even been really nice. We hang out and go to the library’s happy hours together, which is a fun thing to have here in Oakwood.

The kids go to school. The older foxes gossip at the grocery store. I’m the only one who is between the ages of 16 and 63, at least until my brother turns 17, so I can’t speak to the social life of anyone but myself in that regard, but I know for the most part we’ve settled in well.

It’s not that being here is bad. It’s that I can’t count on the Oakwood pack, no matter how nice they are. I’ve learned better than to have faith in someone else’s kindness.

Securing the documents to those water rights, which will allow us to receive a profit no matter who is on the land itself, is the only way to ensure that we can be independent.

Mountain lions aren’t the only ones who know how to place a bribe.

“What’s that?” My little brother’s voice is way too close. Quickly, I crumple the letter and turn, dabbing at my eyes.

“Nothing. Just thinking about home,” I lie.

Josh nods. “I miss it, too,” he says quietly.

I tug him in for a hug. I’m nearly a decade older than Josh is, which means that although he’s my little brother, I helped raise him. Even more so after our mom died.

And then when our dad was killed…

I push him away. “You stink,” I tease gently. “What were you doing? Running around in the woods?”

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