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Chapter Four

Xochil

T he blaring of my phone ringing woke me up from my small nap. I groaned and rubbed my eyes.

“Hello?” I answered.

“I’m about twenty minutes from Phoenix. Where am I heading?” Miguel’s voice came loudly out of my speakers, and I jumped. I forgot I left the car running.

“Can you find us a hotel room and then come keep watch, so I can shower? The restaurant opens in less than an hour.”

“Got you, boss. Send me the restaurant pin and I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Boss?”

“What else am I supposed to call you? I can’t call you Alpha, can I?”

“I’m your cousin,” I reminded him.

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled. “See you later, cuz.”

I rolled my eyes and stretched. My mate’s car was still in the parking lot, and I could feel the mate bond wanting me to go towards the restaurant, so I knew she was still in there. I watched for a few minutes, watching people park and walking in the side door to get ready to open.

We should go check on mate, Erinda suggested.

We can’t. Not until she knows us. Right now, we’d just be freaking her out by going into the building before it opens.

But—

I know. I want to see her, too.

Miguel showed up less than half an hour later, and I pointed out the car to him and described my mate.

“The restaurant opens in fifteen minutes, but wait for me to come back, and we’ll go in for lunch together,” I told him.

“Alright. Here’s the key. I’ll keep watch.”

“Thanks.” I got in my car and went to the hotel. I took a hot shower, changed into clean clothes, and drove back out to the restaurant as quickly as I could. I couldn’t wait to see her again.

When I drove into the parking lot, Miguel was sitting on top of his sister’s Kia, his arms and legs crossed and looking at the restaurant.

“I thought I said look inconspicuous?” I chided.

“No one’s paid attention to me. I figured no one would once the restaurant opened. They’re already busy.” He motioned to the half-full parking lot.

“The food’s amazing,” I agreed.

“Well, let’s go. I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“So are you,” he challenged.

“Fair. Let’s go.”

We walked into the restaurant and I looked around as we waited for the hostess, wanting to see if my mate was out on the floor.

“For two?” the hostess asked when she showed up.

“Yes, please. In the bar area,” I requested.

“The bar is closed for another hour, other than for beer,” she informed us.

“That’s fine. I just prefer that seating area,” I replied.

She guided us to a table a few feet from the bar. The door to the kitchen was right in our view. Perfect.

“Point her out to me when you see her,” Miguel told me when we were alone at our table.

“I think she’s a chef or a manager. I only saw her coming out of the kitchen to tell someone off last night.”

“Right on time for the peak? Lucky timing.”

“No such thing. It was fate,” I told him.

Miguel looked like he wanted to argue, but then the waitress arrived.

“Sorry for the wait. Can I get you guys started with some drinks?”

“Iced tea and a water, please,” Miguel answered.

“Same.”

We ordered appetizers and ate slowly. Miguel wanted to order more right away, but I told him to pace himself. The waitresses looked hurried, and ours kept apologizing for the wait on certain dishes. They were clearly behind in the kitchen, and I wasn’t going to make my mate’s day worse. Eventually, our waitress disappeared, and someone else took over our table.

“We’ve been here four hours and we haven’t seen your mate. Are you sure she’s here?”

“I literally followed her here,” I reminded him, but my own worry was that she may have walked out the back door while I was in here.

She didn’t. I still feel the bond pulling us toward the kitchen, Erinda assured me.

“Are you guys still okay? You finally ready to order an entrée?” Our first waitress came back out to our table.

“Can we get one of every rodizio to share, gorgeous?” Miguel flirted, making her blush. “My cousin and I are going to be here for a while longer as we discuss business. I promise to tip well, for all the customers we’re making you lose by taking up one of your tables.”

“It’s no problem at all. I’ll go put in your entrées,” she said.

“What are you doing?” I chastised Miguel once she left.

“Flirting, so we don’t get kicked out?” he asked innocently, and when I narrowed my eyes at him, he lifted his hands. “Promise. I just want to meet our luna and keep her safe. I’ve got my eye on the goal.”

“We don’t need to cause issues for her at work.”

“I can behave, Xochil. I didn’t even start dating until like two years ago. You’ve been dating way before me. I can keep it in my pants. Trust me,” he replied, a little bit of hurt in his voice.

“I do. I’m just…”

“Feeling like you got hit with a curveball?” he finished for me, and I nodded.

I didn’t know what to make of this. Our pack was unique. It was made up of wolves, bears, pumas and a couple of tiger shifters. There were also witches, warlocks, vampires and a few mystery hybrids. Then, there were Dad’s Jaguar Warriors. While they’d all become wolf shifters, they were also a conundrum. Their life forces, because of their loyalty and service, were entangled with Dad’s. While they were not immortal, they didn’t age; hadn’t for over seventeen hundred years. So, when the Moon Goddess set about finding them mates, she tended to find them someone who would live for as long as them, like Adrien, a vampire at the time, and his mate, Elias, one of Dad’s Jaguar Warriors.

When Selene mated her children from different species and they had children, those children were considered hybrids, though it was more of an honorary title. Most children would take after one of their parents. So, if a wolf and a tiger shifter had a baby, that baby would be either a tiger or a wolf. Occasionally, you might see combinations that lent themselves to a better blend, so to speak, but even if a hybrid could share a few of their non-dominant species’ traits, they weren’t true hybrids.

But my immediate family and Miguel’s were anomalies.

For Miguel, he was the first true-born vampire-wolf hybrid. His father, Uncle Gonzalo, was one of Dad’s Jaguar Warriors turned wolf. His mother was an even bigger rarity. Aunt Kassie was born a vampire and was gifted a wolf spirit by Selene. When she turned, Adrien, once a human sired by Aunt Kassie, was also gifted a wolf spirit. When Miguel and his siblings were born, instead of taking on a predominant species like most hybrids, they were both. Miguel and his siblings have wolf spirits and could shift. They also have vampire speed, a form of compulsion, and can drink blood when necessary. Their vampire traits were a little bit weaker than normal vampires, but they are definitely present and in harmony with their wolf spirits. And they had the added benefit of not being vulnerable to the sun.

My situation was different, and still as unique. Mom was the white wolf. There could only be one in existence at a time, and after a deal gone wrong with a djinn, which essentially made her immortal, meant she would be the only one. Dad was a true immortal god and a shifter, which made me… we didn’t know.

We had no answers as to what our life expectancy was like. At minimum, we assumed we were all living a few lifetimes longer than normal wolf shifters. And because Selene had so far mated her children with other species who would match their life expectancy, we assumed we would be, too.

I didn’t know what it meant for me that I was mated to a human. Did that mean I wouldn’t live as long as we thought? Or did that mean that I was destined to go through the heartbreak of losing my mate, long before I was ready? A part of me was scared. What was going to happen to me when I lost my mate?

“It’s all going to work out, Xochil. I’m sure Selene didn’t give you a mate just to take her away,” Miguel told me, reading my mind. He knew me as well as I knew him. More than just being a future alpha and beta, more than just being cousins, our unique uncertainty helped bond us greatly.

“Let’s hope,” I sighed.

Mom never liked talking about it too much, but I knew she had several mates before she met Dad, and the pain of the bonds breaking had nearly driven her wolf mad.

Following my thoughts, Erinda let out a long, mournful howl at the thought that someday we might lose our mate. Fuck. I was in trouble, because we didn’t even know her name yet, and we were already imagining the worst.

A scream worthy of an award-winning horror movie cut through the patrons hum around us, but what worried me more was the cry of pain that followed, that cut right through my soul.

I didn’t think, I just reacted. I stood and burst through the kitchen doors, looking for my mate. My eyes finally connected to hers, and I was relieved to see she was fine, though she did look like she was injured as she held her arm under the tap.

I thought I heard someone say something to my right, but I bee-lined straight for my mate.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, and the tiny gasp that left her mouth went straight to my soul.

“Ma’am, you can’t be here.” A small man came to stand between me and my mate.

‘Deal with him,’ I ordered Miguel via mind-link, trying hard not to growl at the man for standing between me and what was mine.

“Who screamed?” Miguel came walking into the kitchen, a couple of waitresses hiding behind him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man sighed and moved away to deal with my cousin.

“I broke a nail at the nail bed,” someone answered, causing my mate to break eye contact.

“That’s why you screamed bloody murder? I thought you cut off a limb, Jessica.”

“Sorry, chef. It hurt like a bitch.”

“Come on. I’ll get the first aid kit and wrap up that finger. You okay, boss?” Our waitress, Cassidy, asked.

“Oil burn. Not too bad, though. Can you get my spare jacket from my office when you’re done with Jessica?”

“You got it. Nice bra, by the way.”

I frowned at the teasing tone in her voice and looked down at my mate’s body. She was wearing a see-through camisole, a lacy, light blue bra with red roses stitched in was visible beneath it. It left very little to the imagination.

Lust shot through me as well as anger, when I realized her areolas were visible through the bra and the camisole. No one should see that but me.

“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” I demanded to know, my eyes widening when I watched the nipples pebble as I stared.

“Hot oil splashed on my coat. I took it off before it could burn me,” she answered, then frowned, looking around. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

“I got worried,” I answered, grabbing a kitchen towel and walking over to her so I could wet it and place it on the second arm, which she kept trying to push under the water stream as she looked at me. I placed myself between her and the rest of the kitchen to cover her from wandering eyes.

“Why?” she asked, letting me place the wet cloth on her arm.

“Wouldn’t you get worried when you hear two people scream?” I deflected, not wanting to say because I was worried about her specifically. “I’m Xochil.”

“Aline,” she answered.

“We should take you to get that burn looked at, Aline,” I told her, liking the way her name felt on my tongue. Most of the burns looked okay, but one particular spot on her arm was already blistering.

“No. I can’t leave. I’m the owner and the chef.”

“Your sous chefs can’t take over for a bit?”

“They’re both out with Covid after going on vacation.”

“Both of them?”

“They’re a couple.”

“Oh.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said again, but her tone didn’t tell me she wanted me to leave, so I didn’t.

“I can dress the burn so you can get back to cooking,” I told her.

I didn’t know how to do it, but I’d figure it out. As a white wolf, Mom could heal any physical ailment or wound. Add the fast healing of shifters, and I rarely had a need to know first aid.

‘YouTube how to dress a hot oil burn and link me the cliff notes,’ I asked Miguel via mind-link, who was still talking to the guy who’d asked me to leave.

‘On it,’ he answered, and I saw him leave the kitchen.

“I can do it myself,” Aline answered, and brought my attention back to her.

“Please?” I pleaded, and wanted to fist pump the air when she sighed and nodded. I’d take the small win.

“Martin, can you get me the first aid kit under the sink?” she asked as she motioned me to a table in the corner.

‘Just clean, dry well, and put on some polysporin or petroleum jelly before adding a bandage. Has to be clean and dry,’ Miguel advised.

‘Okay. Thanks,’ I answered.

‘No worries. I’ll just be out here, all by my lonesome,’ he replied dramatically.

I took the first aid kit, placed on the table and opened it, pulling out the stuff I would need. My heart started racing as I placed my hand on the table, palm face up, for hers. She looked at the hand a little apprehensively, but after a few moments of indecision, she placed her hand on mine. I did my best not to gasp as the sparks exploded from the first contact with my mate, and was surprised when she appeared to feel them, because she gasped and pulled her hand back for a moment, before she appeared to think about it, and placed it back on mine.

“So, you’re the owner?” I asked, to distract her and myself from the intense sparks.

“Yes.”

“Are you Brazilian?”

“Born there, but I’ve been here for most of my life. You?”

“Half Mexican, half Dominican. Born here. How old are you?”

You suck at flirting, Erinda chuckled as I grilled my mate for information.

Don’t be a bitch. I’m trying to get to know her.

“Twenty-nine,” Aline answered.

I took my time dressing the burn, asking more questions in between her yelling out instructions to her people, but I could see her anxiety increasing the longer I took.

“Can I help you catch up on your orders?” I asked her, desperate to keep talking to her.

“Are you a chef?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I’ll be fine. Thank you for your help,” she pulled her hand back and put on the new chef’s jacket the waitress had brought her. I got up and followed her, like the love struck fool I already was.

“I—”

Fuck, how do I get her to talk to me after work? I need your expertise. I haven’t dated since high school, I growled in frustration at Erinda.

Ask her out.

She still has to work.

“Can I switch you to the chef’s table as a thank you?” she asked, filling me with relief.

“Only if it’s not an imposition,” I replied instead of screaming “yes” like I was doing in my head.

“None at all,” she answered with a smile. “Cassidy, can you see her switched accordingly?”

“Sure thing. She’s one of my tables, so it should be easy enough.”

She guided me over to the same table we’d been sitting on, then left, coming back less than a minute later with Miguel. Miguel wagged his eyebrows at me and sat down, his eyes going toward my mate.

‘She’s gorgeous, Alpha,’ he mind-linked, smiling at her politely.

Aline looked dismayed for a moment, before she gave a professional smile back at him and turned her attention to the stove, as I wondered why.