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  Wolf Fake Bride

  Shifter Marriage Service

  By: Sky Winters

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  Table of Contents

  Wolf’s Fake Bride: Shifter Marriage Service

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Preview of Bear Pack’s Nanny

  About The Author

  Wolf’s Fake Bride: Shifter Marriage Service

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jocelyn felt tired. No matter what she did, it was wrong. There was no pleasing Carter and she had long stopped trying. Now, it was just a matter of keeping the peace as much as was even possible with him, but there were times that was just impossible. Like today.

  There had been a time when she couldn’t wait for her husband to come home, craved his touch, but those days had passed them by when the affairs had begun. She had excused the first one, overlooked the second, and come to no longer care by the third one.

  Every day, she considered leaving him, but something always seemed to stop her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what nagging little sensation kept her here, in this misery she shared with such a narcissistic, selfish man.

  “How many times are we going to have this conversation?” Jocelyn groaned.

  “As many times as it comes up,” Carter barked back at her.

  Jocelyn turned and began walking away, only to find herself being grabbed by the arm and yanked roughly backward. The liquor on his breath was pungent. He’d been out drinking all night with his boys and turned up back here smelling like strippers and whiskey. It was nothing new. The escalation in physical violence, however, was a recent addition. Flinging his hand from her arm, she jerked away and glared at him, her gaze full of venom.

  “You smell like a fucking whorehouse,” she spat at him.

  “So?”

  “I guess you missed the part of our marriage ceremony where it mentioned forsaking all others.”

  “I guess you missed the part of the deal where you’re supposed to be fruitful and multiply.”

  The first time he had talked so callously about her inability to conceive, she had felt wounded. Now, it didn’t bother her in the least. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. She had wanted children at one time. They had tried so hard to get pregnant after the first year of their marriage, but it had never happened for them.

  Jocelyn had been tested, submitting to any test the doctors would do in hopes they would find some way to fix whatever was broken inside her, but they could never find anything wrong. Still, nothing had been successful. Instead, they recommended that he be tested. He had refused, at first, saying he couldn’t possibly be the problem. He had gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant years ago, but she had miscarried. His claim was that while he was not a father, he was perfectly able to do his part.

  “Please, Carter. That was ten years ago. Let’s just rule it out.”

  In the end, he had agreed to see his own doctor and get tested, eventually learning that he had no issues with mechanics or sperm count. Whatever the reason was for them not getting pregnant was a mystery, so they just kept trying and hoping. Jocelyn even began to take fertility treatments to increase their chances. All had failed and now, so had their marriage.

  “You’re a real bastard when you drink,” she said calmly before turning to walk away, but he wasn’t having it.

  Jocelyn wasn’t prepared for the physical altercation that followed. He had gotten a bit more hands on lately, grabbing her roughly and sometimes shaking her, but now he had escalated to full on assault. She tried to defend herself against his blows, pulling away and falling down in the hallway. The result was a sharp kick in the side with his wingtip shoes.

  “No,” she screamed, summoning every ounce of rage within herself and coming up off the floor unexpectedly, catching him by surprise. She was shocked by her own strength as her arm seemed to take on a life of its own, shooting upward and clocking him squarely in the nose.

  Water poured from his eyes as he grunted in pain. Blood began flowing down his face as he stumbled backward, away from her.

  “You fucking bitch!” he shouted, his voice sounding quite high pitched as it whistled through his impaired nasal passages.

  She was shocked at how quickly he regained his bearings and lunged for her, trying to grab hold of her hair and pull her down, but she ducked to one side, avoiding his grasp. There was a darkness in his eyes, pure menace. It was something she hadn’t seen before.

  She didn’t know what he would do next and had no intention of finding out. Instead, she sprang for her handbag that lay on a nearby counter and snatched it toward her, running for the front door while trying to fish out her keys. Her hands shook as she fumbled across them and yanked them free, dropping them on the front stoop and snatching them up again.

  Inside the car, she tried to steady her hand as she started it up and began backing it out of the driveway. She had no idea where she was going, but she knew she couldn’t stay here with him. Still, she sat there frozen, until she saw him running out the front door toward her. His nose had flooded the front of his shirt with blood. It was enough to jar her from her temporary paralysis.

  Throwing the car into reverse, she rapidly backed onto the street and switched to first, the tires squealing as she shot out of their neighborhood toward . . . somewhere undecided. Her phone began to ring from inside her purse. She was sure it was him. It rang until voicemail picked up, then began to ring again. Definitely him. After a few times, the ringing stopped, but the message chimes began. He was texting. As the car approached a nearby bridge, she rolled down the window, pulled the phone out of her purse and hurled it over the railing to careen toward the river below.

  She needed a phone, but not that one. It was one he had given her and there was no doubt it would be cut off before she even got to her destination. Whatever he had to say in his messages and texts weren’t something she thought she would want to see anyway. The car was solely in his name as well. He’d take that too. Likewise with their house and pretty much everything they owned. He had pushed for her to give up her career, and the result of her doing so would be that she now had nothing but the contents of her purse and the clothes she was wearing.

  As she reached the edge of town, she pulled into the local police station. Parking the car in their lot, she retrieved her purse and dropped the keys in the driver’s seat. She was tempted to leave it unlocked and see if anyone was brave enough
to steal it, but she’d probably just end up in more trouble if they did. Instead, she locked it and walked away. She knew he would report it stolen and they would use the lo-jack that came with the road assistance to track it down. She wanted it nowhere near where she might be, so this seemed the safest place to leave it. Plus, it would scare him to think she had gone to report him.

  Out on the sidewalk, she looked around, trying to decide where to go from here. There was nothing in this place but bad memories. Rather than hanging around to see what else might happen, she made up her mind. She made her way to the bank and withdrew what little money she had in her personal account before making her way to the bus station.

  She was tempted to go back to the machine, to empty whatever she could get from the machine from their joint accounts, but she knew he would come after her for it. In his mind, she was a failed wife, an empty vessel, and she deserved nothing, which is what he would make sure she got, even if he had to track her down and take it back from her.

  She shook all over, fear having taken hold of her entire being. He had gone too far this time and now that he had crossed that line, she didn’t believe he would ever cross back. Instead, it would only escalate. She could stay here, try to go through lawyers and the police to maintain her safety and standard of living, but she had seen how that had worked for friends in similar situations and she couldn’t be bothered to deal with such carnage.

  Looking up at the timetables, she tried to decide where she wanted to go, finally selecting Eugene, Oregon. It was a long way from Red Bank, New Jersey and would give her more than two days to sort out what she was going to do next. She purchased her ticket under a fake name and darted next door to the large petrol station to buy some snacks and the cheapest smart phone they had, one of those pay as you go deals that didn’t care who she was or where she lived.

  Jocelyn doubted Carter would bother to look for her, but she just couldn’t deal with his shit anymore. She was going to make sure he left her alone until she was ready to come back and deal with him and the divorce he would no doubt file as quickly as possible. Right now, she just needed some peace from it all. Dealing with him had been bad for her psyche and she needed time to regroup. She’d never get that if she stayed here or if he could find her.

  Less than an hour since she had fled the suburban home she shared with her husband, Jocelyn Wray took her seat on a bus to travel cross country to somewhere she had never been with less than three hundred dollars to her name. She didn’t dare use the joint credit cards and they had always maintained separate bank accounts, so she would have to make do with what she had. Her plan was to get somewhere, find a cheap place to stay for a few days and get whatever job she could find to make ends meet until she could do better.

  Looking out the window, she felt oddly at peace for the first time in a very long time. She watched as the landscape passed by the windows. They traveled through small towns and large cities, each mile taking her farther and farther away from a life she hated, but to where? She told herself that no matter where it was, it had to be better than where she was running from.

  After a while, her nerves calmed and her exhaustion returned. She fell asleep, slipping in and out of consciousness as the bus carried her to a new place, a new life. In the moments of wakefulness, she felt something she hadn’t felt for a long time – hope. In the periods of sleep, she felt a peace that she thought had eluded her long ago. This was the right decision, she knew that.

  Fear tried to surface here and there, but she pushed it back, reminding herself of who she was. She was a survivor, had always been one. Her independence had started long before she was ready for it and it had ended with her marriage to Carter. Now, that was ending too and she couldn’t say she was sad about it. It was a relief to be free of him. She was taking back her independence. That’s all this was.

  The miles continued to stretch out, days spent sleeping upright or slumped over in station seats until she finally arrived at her destination or at least the first stop on a journey to wherever things might take her. She got off the bus in Eugene, Oregon and looked around. It seemed like a decent enough place and that was good enough for now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By the time the bus had pulled into Eugene, Jocelyn had managed to set up her new phone and get on the internet to look into where she was going and what she might do when she got there. There was a bed and breakfast not far from the bus station that she could get to on foot. She couldn’t book it online without using a credit card, so she decided to just wait and hope for the best. There were a lot of hospitality type jobs listed in the online job forums that wouldn’t require any experience, so she’d bookmarked some of them. It made her feel a bit better to at least have some idea of what she planned to do, but things quickly went downhill once she arrived.

  “Sorry, honey, we’re all booked up,” the older lady at the BnB told her politely.

  “Do you know of any other reasonable places within walking distance where I might get a room?”

  The woman’s brow furrowed in contemplation. She was already shaking her head no when a voice from behind Jocelyn spoke up.

  “I’ve got a place if you don’t mind tight spaces. It’s houseboat. Bit of a shithole, but everything works, and the view is pretty,” a man said in a deep tone.

  Jocelyn turned to find herself looking at the biggest man she’s ever seen. He wasn’t fat, but very tall and muscular. His thick beard and ball cap suited the faded jeans and grateful dead t-shirt he wore beneath them. He was intimidating, to say the least. She turned back toward the woman as if to silently ask if he was safe and the woman smiled.

  “You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but this is Hank Timmons, one of Eugene’s finest deputies. He and his wife live in a pretty nice house over on the Willamette River, but he can’t stop tooling with that old boat of his dad’s,” she told her. Jocelyn smiled and turned back around.

  “Jo Claybourne,” she told him. It wasn’t exactly a lie to use the shortened version of her name, along with her maiden name. She’d be back to it sooner or later anyway.

  “Well, Jo Claybourne. You aren’t a felon or a drug user, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then hop in the car and I’ll give you a ride over,” he said. “Where are your bags?”

  “I don’t have any,” she told him.

  “Hmm. New Jersey accent, no bags. You’re a long way from home. There’s a story there. Anything I need to be concerned about?”

  “Not a thing,” Jocelyn replied, giving him her best smile.

  “All right. I’m going to trust you and help you out then. Don’t tell my wife you’ve run away from home. She’ll think the worst.”

  “Understood.”

  “Do you need to get some things while we’re in town? Clothes? Shampoo?”

  “I don’t know what I can afford. How much are you going to charge me for the digs?”

  Hank looked her up and down for a moment. It wasn’t one of those looks from men that made you uncomfortable, but the type that told you he was sizing you up, deciding what sort of person you were.

  “How long do you plan to stay?”

  “I’m not sure. I need to find a job, so maybe a week or two, until I can get something and get a little money under my belt?”

  “I tell you what. It’s in a bit of a state. If you’re willing to do a bit of cleaning up while you’re there, we’ll call it an even deal.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, relieved at her good luck.

  “No, but we’ll go with that unless you give me reason enough to change my mind.”

  “I won’t,” she told him, following him to the patrol car that sat out front.

  “You’ll have to sit in the back like a perp. Sorry about that, but rules, you know?”

  “A ride’s a ride,” she laughed, waiting while he opened the back door.

  Jocelyn slid into the back seat and sighed as he walked around and climbed behind the wheel. Ten minutes
later, they were pulling into a large shopping center where he waited outside for her to get her shopping done. When she returned, with a few bags containing some essentials, he helped her put them in the trunk and opened the back door for her again.

  “My wife said to bring you to the house for dinner,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re already doing me such a huge favor, I couldn’t impose.”

  He let out a deep laugh and shook his head back and forth.

  “You don’t understand, it wasn’t a request of you or me. She told me I’m bringing you up for dinner. She’s a good woman, but she can’t have a stranger staying on the property without meeting them first. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Just small town principles, ya know?”

  “Fair enough,” Jocelyn replied.

  Patty Timmons was a good match for her husband. If he was six four, which he easily was, she was all of six one herself. Compared to Jocelyn’s petite five two frame, they were giants. Though they were older, she guessed mid-sixties, at least, they were still attractive. She had spotted one of their wedding photos on the wall as they entered the house and was mesmerized by their youthful, smiling faces.

  After dinner, Hank had taken her out the back of the house and down a pathway leading to the dock to which the boat was moored. It was a lot bigger than she expected, but very much rundown looking, as he had warned her. The framework seemed solid enough, but it was badly in need of a coat of paint. Inside, it was dusty and drab, but it was dry and a place to lay her head, without having to worry so much about money or safety like she would in some fleabag hotel.

  “All right, here you go. I’ll let you settle in,” he told her, after showing her where everything was and how to work it all.

  He started to walk away and then turned around, pulling something from his pocket. He handed her a small white card. Jo flipped it over in her hand, noting that it was a business card for the sheriff’s office. It had his office and mobile number on it.