45 pages • 1 hour read
Lana FergusonThe Fake Mate
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Mackenzie”
Mackenzie ruminates on her memories of last night and grapples with the fact that she is now pining for Noah. Her body feels off-balance somehow, and she reaches for one of Noah’s shirts to take comfort in his scent, but this gesture only stokes her arousal for him. Soon, she is masturbating in his bed and thinking of him—only to be interrupted by a call from Noah himself. He suggests that they get lunch together at the cafeteria more regularly, and when the call ends, Mackenzie is perplexed by what she had been doing. When she sees Parker later, he comments on her sickly demeanor. When she tells him that she has had a headache ever since leaving Noah’s house, Parker voices his concern over how close she and Noah are becoming—given the original terms of their fake relationship. Suddenly, Dennis comes into Parker’s office. Although Dennis shows no signs of having overheard their conversation, Parker worries that he has blown Mackenzie and Noah’s cover. Mackenzie’s health quickly takes a turn for the worse, and she collapses to the ground. Others rush to help, and someone comments that she is going into heat.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Noah”
Noah is on his way to find Mackenzie when he smells her from afar and instinctively knows that she needs him. He rushes to her side and asks everyone else to leave. Liam accuses him of negligence for allowing Mackenzie to leave home that morning, but Noah mostly ignores him; instead, he becomes too focused on Parker, who is holding Mackenzie in his arms. When Noah moves to take her home, Parker tries to stop him, but Mackenzie has a moment of lucidity and reaches for Noah. He promises Parker that he will take care of her and will do whatever she needs him to do—no more, no less. Parker allows it, and Noah brings her to his home. When she wakes, she tells him that her heat, which is usually highly regular, is off-schedule. Neither can explain the phenomenon, but Noah arranges to borrow his cousin’s cabin so that Mackenzie can go through her heat and shift into her wolf form as needed. He offers to help her through her heat but gives her the option of going through it alone despite the primal desires he feels to be near her. Mackenzie wants him with her and urges him to make his plans.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Mackenzie”
They drive to Noah’s cousin’s cottage, and Mackenzie is still in a daze. When they arrive, he instructs her to stay in the car because his cousin, who is waiting for them, is an alpha; given Mackenzie’s current state, Noah would not be able to endure another shifter getting close to her. As she watches the two cousins talk, Mackenzie feels oddly satisfied with Noah’s possessive behavior. When his cousin leaves, they have the cottage to themselves, and Noah admits that it is difficult for him to maintain control of himself with her thick scent everywhere. His admission leads them to the brink of having sex, but Mackenzie needs to shift and asks Noah to accompany her. He accepts, claiming her as his during the time that they stay together in the cottage.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Noah”
In their shifted forms, Noah and Mackenzie play in the snow, where Mackenzie leads Noah on a chase through the woods. Back in the cottage, they fall in bed together and have sex. In the quiet aftermath, however, Noah realizes that he wants to have more than a transactional relationship with Mackenzie.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Mackenzie”
Over the next three days, Mackenzie and Noah have sex repeatedly, and she questions whether her need for him is a product of their designations. When she next wakes with full lucidity, she tells him that she is glad he is there with her during her heat. He fusses over her and makes her eat and drink, and Mackenzie worries over what will become of their relationship when they return to their normal lives. As they once again become intimate, Noah admits that matters have become complicated for him. Despite his future job in Albuquerque, he tells her that he wants to try a real date with her. She agrees, and as he falls asleep, Noah promises that he will never let her get away from him—a promise that Mackenzie echoes.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Noah”
Noah drives them back to the city and contemplates the ways in which Mackenzie’s sudden arrival in his life has upended his plans. At work, he tells the board director at the hospital in Albuquerque that he will need to delay his decision. Mackenzie brings him lunch, and they talk about their upcoming date. They admit that they felt in a world of their own while they were away at the cabin, and their return to the hospital has been odd. Mackenzie returns to work, and Noah receives a call from his mother soon afterward, demanding to know when she will be able to meet Mackenzie. Noah dodges the question, but with the mess he left at his cousin’s cottage, his mother knows that their relationship is no longer feigned. He tells her that he has asked for more time to decide whether to take the Albuquerque job. While he admonishes himself for passing up a dream career opportunity, his mother believes Mackenzie to be “the one” for him; she tells Noah that Mackenzie is a worthy reason for him to remain in Denver. They discuss Noah’s insecurities and his tendency to hide behind them. She encourages him to believe in Mackenzie and reiterates her desire to meet her, then ends the call.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Mackenzie”
In preparation for her date with Noah, Mackenzie has enlisted Parker and his boyfriend to help her decide what to wear. Mackenzie feels nervous for the first time in a long time. Noah arrives on time to pick her up, and she urges her friends to hide. He brings her to a local food vendor market, and the theme is soup: Mackenzie’s favorite food. Touched and appreciative of his efforts to create the perfect date, Mackenzie feels herself falling for him in earnest, and they make plans to spend the weekend together.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Noah”
Noah is accosted by Jessica, the resident rumormonger, who comments on his happy demeanor and congratulates him on his mating to Mackenzie. The board at the Albuquerque hospital is pressuring him for an answer, but Noah remains hesitant, given how things are developing with Mackenzie. He gets paged to the eighth floor, which is currently under renovation, and finds Mackenzie waiting for him. They engage in doctor-patient roleplay and have sex in one of the empty offices. By the end of the encounter, Noah is called to the X-ray room, and when Mackenzie teases him for being in high demand, he realizes that he is in love with her. Mackenzie demands another date from him, and as she leaves, he wonders how to confess his feelings for her.
Chapters 13-20 Analysis
In this section of the novel, Ferguson conforms to several conventions of the romance genre as her characters overcome their first hurdle and inevitably develop a sense of greater emotional intimacy with one another. The author also combines this pattern with the rather vaguely defined parameters of her world-building as Mackenzie enters an unexpected heat cycle and experiences a bit of a crisis as a result. This development thrusts Noah and Mackenzie into an intimate and highly vulnerable situation that muddies the initial boundaries that they set with each other, stoking their growing romantic feelings and shattering the façade of their business-only arrangement. Notably, the relative isolation of the cabin allows the protagonists to transcend the social limitations of their quotidian lives. Immersed in the cozy, domestic setting, Noah and Mackenzie find a new freedom to pursue their most authentic desires without restraint. When in Denver, they feel the constant pressure to maintain the façade of their fake relationship, but now, they give in to a state of uninhibited desire, and the remote location gives them the space and time they need to be honest with themselves and each other.
Ferguson signals this transition to honest emotional connection through the physical act of shifting, for Noah and Mackenzie quite literally shed their human forms and become the most primal version of themselves. As Noah remarks while chasing Mackenzie in the woods, “It feels like a different time; what we’re doing seems reminiscent of an age where our kind […] hunted our food and claimed our mates in a similar dance […]. And with my hindbrain running the show right now, that thought is a satisfying one” (225). As they engage in a primitive mating ritual, Ferguson suggests that Noah and Mackenzie find a simpler way to communicate their desire for one another: one that is untethered to the worries of their careers, the lies that they have built to maintain those careers, and the fears that they both hold about the prospect of making a future together. Unfettered by the rules of modern civilization, Noah and Mackenzie can let their guard down and allow themselves to embrace the true extent of their mutual connection.
However, Ferguson also uses this situation to explore The Tension Between Fate and Choice. For most of the narrative, Mackenzie in particular struggles with the idea of finding her mate, resisting the steadfast commitment implied by this notion, and she has also actively rejected the societal expectations attached to the coupling of omegas and alphas, who are commonly regarded as ideal mates for one another. Although Mackenzie’s unexpected heat allows her and Noah to grow closer, the situation also makes Mackenzie feel as if she has lost all agency. As she privately reflects, “I can’t remember a time when […] I’ve seemed to need someone like I’ve needed Noah—and with every passing hour where I give more of myself to him, an anxiety grows on my hindbrain like a parasite, fueling my actions, making me needy” (234). As she finds herself disturbed by her growing need for Noah’s presence, she rebels against the idea that a biological compulsion is governing her choices and behavior. Thus, Ferguson highlights the wavering and uncertain divide between her characters’ biological determinants and their personal volition. Although Mackenzie might be able to walk away from Noah in these circumstances, the author implies that as an omega, Mackenzie must contend with the immovable fact that her own body makes her crave Noah’s presence and renders her dependent upon him. Despite consenting to Noah’s participation before the onset of her heat, it is clear that her will is at least partially overridden by these biological imperatives, and this dynamic complicates the issue of continuous consent throughout their days of intimacy. Ferguson thus invokes the concept of predetermined fate and declines to answer the question of whether the love borne of such an interaction is a willful or predetermined one.
