The Fake Mate
Mackenzie Carter is an overworked ER physician, a hopeful alpha werewolf from a family that expects her to present and settle down, and utterly uninterested in being set up with anyone her matchmaking grandmother has approved. Noah Taylor is the standoffish, infuriatingly competent neurosurgeon she works with, and he has problems of his own, namely a pack council that will not stop pressuring him to take a mate. Their solution is theoretically simple: pretend to be together through one miserable pack ceremony and get everyone off their backs. Sharing a single hotel room, a convincing set of lies, and a heat cycle neither of them planned for complicates matters fast. Lana Ferguson's novel is a steamy paranormal romance that blends fake-dating tropes with werewolf politics and workplace rivalry.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Fake Mate
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
To dodge her grandmother's matchmaking, omega doctor Mackenzie Carter announces she has a mate at work. Stoic alpha colleague Noah Taylor agrees to play the part, and what is supposed to be a quiet contract goes sideways fast.
The Fake Mate was written by Lana Ferguson and published in 2023. Ferguson is part of the wave of indie-published paranormal romance authors who have crossed over to traditional publishing.
Yes. The Fake Mate contains explicit on-page romance scenes, around 4 to 5 out of 5 on the spice scale. It is a paranormal romance with shifters and a fake-mating premise.
Yes. The Fake Mate contains explicit on-page romance scenes, around 4 to 5 out of 5 on the spice scale. It is a paranormal romance with shifters and a fake-mating premise.
The Fake Mate is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Fake Mate takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Fake Mate is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Fake Mate is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.