Page 10 of Her Fake Mate

I blink. “Yes. There is someone I’m interested in. But she’s having… trouble getting over her ex.”

“Is he in the pack?”

“No. Not anymore.”

Mia bites her lip. The sight of her pearly white teeth worrying at the plump pink flesh…

I swallow. Hard.

“Do you think if she sees us together, she’ll be jealous?”

I don’t know. Terra’s not normally the jealous type, but who knows. Maybe it would be inspirational for her.

“She might,” I venture.

Mia scrutinizes me again. “So, we pretend to date. You get the girl you’ve always wanted. I get safety and social acceptance for my leash. It seems like I’ve got a lot more to lose, but no pressure,” she says bitterly.

I shrug. “I’ll be thirty in twelve months.”

Mia’s sharp intake of breath makes my own heart pump in response. “Zander. You’ll lose the ability to shift if you’re not with your mate by then!”

“You think I don’t know that?” I snap.

Mia flushes. “Well. It’s just… I’m just saying. Why would you pretend to date me when you should be trying to find your mate?”

“I think you just stated two very compelling reasons,” I grumble.

She sighs and shuts her eyes. “Okay. Let’s say you want to do this. When should we start?”

I give her a grin. “Right now.

Chapter 3

Mia

He has to be high. Or drunk. Or just out of his damn mind.

There is no way that I want to pretend to date anyone, and there is no way in hell that I want to pretend to be Zander’s girlfriend. For one, I hate him.

Actually, that’s it.

I also don’t hate him. I just really don’t like him.

Part of me is never going to forget him looking me straight in the eye and telling me that we didn’t belong here. I don’t remember if those were his exact words, but the sentiment was clear. That we were draining the pack’s resources.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Then, when I open them, I take in Zander Black for the first time.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really allowed myself to look at him. There’s always been so much other… stuff in the way. Emotions. Feelings. Thoughts.

I’ve really just never stepped back to see what he’s like.

Tall. Really tall. The type of tall that blocks out the sun. His hair is a riot of dark tendrils, twisting this way and that. In the morning sun, I swear I can see blue highlights in them, like a blackbird’s wing.

That, however, could just be the fact that his steel blue eyes are glowering at me from his craggy face.

Not glowering, actually. What I had thought was a lot of brooding and general anger is probably just the fact that he has dark eyebrows and doesn’t smile much. He’s actually got a very handsome face, in the sense that the side of a mountain is handsome. Imposing, I guess, is the word that comes to mind.

“So?” he says in that rumbling voice of his. “Do I pass?”

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