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  The Shifter’s Fake Fiancé

  Shifter Dating Service: Book Four

  A Paranormal Romance

  by Jasmine Wylder

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Also by Jasmine Wylder

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To my loved ones B & B, who encouraged me to fly toward my dream:

  Let’s soar.

  Chapter One

  Guilty.

  Valerie Gilson rarely wanted to drink after a case she was judging was over, but this was certainly one of those cases. She tossed off her judge’s robes, hoping that somehow taking them off would relieve her of the weight of what she had just had to do. It was a foolish hope; she knew that but still sighed with disappointment when her shoulders were as heavy as ever.

  She linked her fingers together as she stared at the file of evidence before her. It was only a few minutes ago that the jury had come back from the case trying Harry Finnegan of arson. Finnegan was a dragon shifter, and there had been very little evidence against him, other than the fact he was a dragon, had been in the area at the time and apparently had a few words with the building owner several weeks before.

  But the jury still decided he was guilty.

  It was times like this that Valerie really hated her job. Given what she had heard in this case, there simply wasn’t enough evidence to convict Finnegan. Other options had not been explored. Police work was sloppy, and evidence was twisted to fit the theory, rather than theories being made to fit the evidence.

  She didn’t have much time to decide her ruling. She could overthrow the jury’s conviction, citing inefficient evidence. It was probably what the new Governor, Brock Bloom, was hoping would happen. He was a snake in the grass, watching her every move and loudly proclaiming how much he supported her policies when it came to paranormal trials. The fact was, shifters and vampires were over-represented in jails. Most of them were there for either minor infractions or because juries decided that because they were a dragon shifter it must mean they burnt down a building. Bloom always told her to her face how ‘brave’ and ‘daring’ she was to give shifters light punishments or overturn convictions.

  And behind her back made passive-aggressive comments to the media. Behind her back, sent her superiors to tell her she was taking the law into her own hands too often. Sending her little memos and emails about how the justice system needed to prevail.

  She knew what it meant. He was looking for reasons to get rid of her, while still maintaining a public front of trying to help shifters out. How he’d managed to get elected was beyond her. So many of his policies were regressive to the point of being frightening.

  There was a knock on her door and Valerie shifted the case file to one side. “Come in.”

  Her PA, Camille Roxton, came into the room with a steaming cup of coffee. She looked at Valerie sympathetically as she set it down. “What are you going to do this time?”

  “I’m not sure. If I keep overthrowing jury convictions, I’m going to have even more people pounding at my door saying that I’m taking justice into my own hands. But I cannot with good conscience send a man who might be innocent to jail! There just isn’t enough evidence.”

  “He might have done it.”

  Valerie shook her head. “Might isn’t good enough. Why is it that cases like this aren’t looked at twice but when I have a man confess to being part of the fucking mafia he’s let out? And no matter what happens, it’s my fault.”

  Camille put a hand on her shoulder. “The Kavan McBride case? Still? It’s been over a year, you should—”

  “Don’t tell me to let it go,” Valerie warned. “Not when it’s still hanging over my position like a guillotine waiting to get me fired.”

  She picked up the mug of coffee and blew on it, her mind elsewhere. The Finnegan case wasn’t the only one that was weighing on her today. She had thought that the fight she went through to become one of the youngest appointed judges in the state, having gone through law school by the age of twenty, was hard. She had known what she wanted, and she was very intelligent. Of course, it had really been her parents who had been able to get her through those times, emotionally and financially. They’d given everything they had in order for her to make it here. Tutors from a young age, paying for her to get through school.

  There hadn’t been time for friends, not that she could connect with other people that well. As a child, she didn’t understand her peers’ childish fantasies, nor did she understand the games they would play. She preferred to read and study and learn. Then, when she graduated from high school a prodigy and immediately started law school, her classmates were all a decade older than her, or so it seemed. Sure, she was able to bond with them in structured debates, but she wasn’t of legal age to participate in many of their activities outside of school.

  Now, she had to wonder if it was all for nothing. If she was going to have to start over entirely new. She’d always wanted to be a judge, to work with the law and make the world better and more just. The past year had seen her fighting every single day to keep her job, though, and now? Now, no matter what she ruled on the Finnegan case, it was going to be a strike against her.

  Not that I could put him in jail just to save my career, she thought, pretending to take a sip of the scalding coffee just to hide her face from Camille.

  Camille frowned at her. “You need to go home. Get some rest. I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’ve lost a lot of weight and there are black circles under your eyes.”

  Valerie snorted. Lost weight would at least, perhaps, stop people from criticizing her judgments on the grounds of “You’re fat.” She’d always been a curvy gal, with puberty hitting her hard and giving her an hourglass figure far before she was ready for the attention those sort of curves got her. Camille was right, though. She had lost quite a bit of weight recently. Not enough to stop her from being curvy but enough that her doctor mentioned a few concerns. It was just stress, though, she knew that.

  Once this McBride case was all sorted out, she wouldn’t feel like she didn’t have the time to eat.

  Camille put a granola bar in front of her. Valerie rolled her eyes but scarfed it down anyway.

  “Alright. I’m ready to do this. There isn’t enough evidence against Finnegan and the jury clearly didn’t listen to the defense attorney.”

  Camille smiled and patted her shoulder. “Go get ‘em. Show the world what doing the right thing looks like.”

  There was an uproar in the courthouse when she announced her decision, but Valerie didn’t back down, even when the press tried to attack her with questions of shifter bias. She ignored the accusations, merely repeating what she said in the courthouse, that there wasn’t enough evidence and the police had done an inefficient investigation.

  Not enough evidence.


  Valerie was exhausted by the time she got back to her house. Maybe she needed a vacation. Her mother was always telling her that she needed to drive out to the mountains, to spend a week or two on the farm. Right now, that sounded like a dream. It would be a nice switch, to gather eggs and feed the horses and milk the cows. Go back to a simpler, slower pace and not have to worry about everything.

  The only problem with that was, she was certain even if she did it, everything she was trying to get away from would only come crashing down on her and she wouldn’t get away from it at all.

  She sighed when she saw Detective Hope Rockson standing at her door. The detective often came to her for warrants since they had a good rapport, but today was not the day that Valerie wanted to deal with Hope.

  “Detective,” she greeted with a slight incline of her head.

  “Judge.” Hope nodded back. “I apologize for disturbing you at home. I’ve got an urgent case, though. I need a warrant against the Carl Lancaster mafia family. Specifically, against Matthew Lancaster, his son. I have reason to believe that he’s starting up a sex trafficking operation.”

  A cold ball of dread sank into Valerie’s stomach. Carl Lancaster. Just the name felt like a shot to the gut. She worked hard to keep her expression neutral as she unlocked her door. If she signed a warrant against Matthew Lancaster, Carl would destroy her. Utterly. She gestured Hope inside.

  “Let me see what evidence you’ve got.”

  Hope set down everything. She wanted a warrant to search shipping containers down at the docks because she was convinced that the Lancasters were moving teenage boys through them. Valerie looked through everything and her heart sank even lower.

  “You don’t have any evidence.” She leaned back in her chair. “I can’t give you a warrant based on a hunch; you know that.”

  Hope pointed at the manifest of shipping containers. “What does Lancaster need with all these? He says he’s moving fish but—”

  “I’m sorry.” Valerie shook her head. Part of her hated having to say no on this one. Hope was one of the few detectives who came to her with respect; most of them came with skimpy evidence thinking that because she was so young, she’d be a pushover. Another part of her, though, was guiltily glad she didn’t have to choose between justice and her career again. “I just threw out a guilty conviction today because of lack of evidence. I can’t sign this warrant, knowing Lancaster could be let off the hook because some slick-talking lawyer argues that it wasn’t lawful. I’m in hot water right now; you know that if it’s questioned on this, it’ll be overthrown.”

  “I know.” Hope looked intently at her. “Right now, I don’t care if I get Lancaster or not. I could do everything by the book, and he might still get off. Hell, look what happened with Kavan McBride!”

  Valerie flinched.

  “What I want is to save those boys. Lancaster thinks that by trafficking boys rather than girls, nobody will notice or care. I need to prove that it’s not true. Maybe then he’ll back off. At the very least, his father will find out about it and maybe he’ll put a stop to it!”

  Valerie stared down at the warrant. The weight was back on her shoulders. On the one hand, she understood entirely. Matthew Lancaster was a horrible person, worse than his father, and any victory against him would be one worth celebrating. On the other hand…

  No. There was no ‘other hand’. Not in this case. If Hope was right and there were boys being kidnapped out of the country and sold into sex slavery, she couldn’t put anything above saving them. Even if she was punished for it, even if Lancaster went free.

  She signed the warrant and handed it to Hope. “You better be right.”

  “I am.”

  Valerie saw her to the door, then moved to her kitchen to make herself some food. Loneliness washed over her, but she fought it down. She didn’t want to burden her parents with this, not when they were coming up onto harvest season and the crop yield was lower than expected. They knew most of what was going on and besides that, her mom would just tell her to come to visit for a few days.

  She didn’t want to visit for a few days. She wanted someone with her, to hold her in their arms right now and make everything okay.

  Maybe I should get a cat.

  After all, a cat wouldn’t betray her… wouldn’t use her. Wouldn’t cheat on her, lie to her, or poke holes in the condoms trying to get her pregnant when he knew she didn’t want to have kids yet. Valerie shook her head, trying to force aside the self-pity of her failed love life and instead flicked on the TV.

  Of course, it went straight to the news—about how Kavan McBride had walked free and it was all her fault.

  ***

  Kavan McBride needed a new TV.

  The old Boob Tube that he’d picked up off the side of the road had finally given up the ghost. It had been right in the middle of the latest news story demonizing Judge Valerie Gilson for his early release from jail when it went kaput. Now, the only distraction he had from the couple in the apartment above him screaming and shouting in ecstasy as they fucked on every surface in their home was the couple below him screaming and shouting in fury.

  The apartment wasn’t a nice one. There was a battle going on between the roaches and the rats that fought over the turf. It was enough to drive him bonkers. All the food he had stayed sealed in tight metal containers and he slept in a hammock every night; in the morning, he put it, too, in an airtight container. It was the best he could afford at the moment, though, what with having no job.

  All the reports that said he’d been released from jail early made him want to laugh. There was no ‘early’ release. He had been let out as his case was being retried. The ‘mishandled evidence’ of his first case meant that he was stuck in this crappy apartment, waiting for a new trial to come along and convict him of everything he’d already been found guilty of once.

  All the same, the war between roaches and rats was better than being in jail.

  He jumped, startled, when the woman in the apartment below screamed out a stream of obscenities and something crashed into something else. He snatched the cellphone from off the table, ready to call the cops—but didn’t dial.

  For one thing, he knew from experience that calling the cops on domestic disturbances like this was, nine times out of ten, useless. And if he did call? Well, the chances were that he was going to get arrested. A wolf shifter with known ties to the mafia and a domestic disturbance? Well, for all they knew he was the one beating up the couple.

  He snorted as he tossed the phone back to the table and headed for the door. Someone must really hate Valerie Gilson in order for him to be released from jail just to discredit her.

  Kavan jumped down the stairs to the floor below and quickly found the apartment where the arguing was coming from. He pounded on the door a few times before a man with a large bruise on his face answered, looking fierce and angry.

  “Hey there,” Kavan said with a friendly grin. “I’m coming in.”

  The man started to protest, but Kavan pushed past him. The apartment was a mess, with broken dishes everywhere. A woman stood in the middle of the room, holding a plate above her head, ready to smash it. There was a bruise on her face, too. Kavan looked between the two of them, not sure which one was the aggressor in this case.

  “I live upstairs,” he said in a friendly tone. “And I’m just letting you know that I can hear everything that goes on down here. And that I have enough experience in these cases to know that you two need to break up or else one of you is going to end up killing the other one.”

  The woman dropped her plate. “This is none of your concern—”

  “It is,” Kavan interrupted. “Because I’m a part of this world and domestic violence is still violence. I don’t want to see anybody dead. So, tell you what.” He met first her eyes, then the man’s. He looked enraged but didn’t speak. “If I hear you two fighting again, if you can’t work it out to stop being abusive, violent and destructive—and I don’t care which one of you doe
s the abuse, know that—I am going to put a stop to it. And you won’t like that.”

  He waited a moment, still smiling pleasantly. Both the man and woman looked abashed. Then, with a nod, he headed for the door.

  Kavan knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it. But he was going to keep an eye on them and find out what was going on. There was clearly abuse of some sort going on and he was going to put an end to it.

  A familiar scent curled around his nostrils when he returned to his apartment. The couple upstairs had stopped having sex and so he heard the heart beating inside. Dread and hope warred in his chest as he stepped in and bowed toward the figure seated at his table.

  Carl Lancaster had always cut an impressive figure. Now, his fitted suit and blood-red tie made him look larger than life in this dumpy apartment where even the rats wouldn’t live if they could afford a better place. Kavan’s heart beat shallowly as he took one of the jeweled hands stretched out to him and kissed it.

  “Godfather,” he greeted. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  Kavan wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Lancaster didn’t make social calls. He also knew that he never came to these places alone. He’d have his bodyguards around here somewhere. Kavan had been expecting this visit for some time. His sudden release from jail reeked of cop cooperation and that sort of thing could get a man killed. If he was honest, Kavan was surprised that he hadn’t gotten a visit before now. After all, a year was a long time. Maybe Lancaster was waiting on more movement with his retrial? That, too, was taking an odd length of time…

  “I have been meaning to see you for a while now, Kavan.” Lancaster gave him a grandfatherly smile. “I have been so busy with the business, though. My son is getting all worked up about wanting to have more of the family business, and my time has been filled up with making sure he’s ready. Such a smart boy and yet so stupid.” He sighed and shook his head. “Not like you. Who would have thought that after a confession, a man would still have his case thrown out?”