Soul-Mate (Immortal Love 1) (15 page)

I kept my eyes on her, baffled. She was extremely wise for someone her age. On the other hand, I was acting extremely immature. Anna was a beautiful woman, and I had to get used to having other men ogling her. Nothing in her behavior led me to believe that she wasn’t taking our relationship seriously. Since she’d found out that we were mates, everything between us had become even better.

“Do you want to go back home?” she asked me, noticing my pondering eyes.

“No, I want to stay right here on this date with my gorgeous girlfriend, eating miniature French food.”

She chuckled, happiness returning to her face. She had joked about the portions French restaurants tended to serve. She wasn’t sure that I was going to be satisfied, because I liked big burgers way too much. As if on cue, the waiter brought the appetizers: figs oozing with goat cheese.

“It looks delicious,” Anna said, glancing at my face to see my reaction. She had chosen the appetizers.

“Too bad that it doesn’t smell better,” I joked, stealing another smile from her.

“It’s probably the goat cheese, but the honey and the figs smell wonderful.”

“I trust your taste,” I said, looking at the plate, unsure if I should ruin the presentation. It was really elegant. I started to eat. “We should talk about next week.”

“Why? Is something important happening next week?”

“I’m going to assign you for patrolling.”

“So soon?”

“You’ve passed all the tracking and fighting tests with flying colors. Everybody agrees that you seem ready to be part of the tracking and patrolling team.”

“That’s a really important step for being part of your community, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Besides, people don’t think you can be a spy, because you are a hybrid.”

“Oh, I guess hybrids are the ones they would least expect to work with the radicals who chase us.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t be coherent. But you really earned your promotion.”

“Am I going to win a badge for that?” she joked.

“You won something a lot better than a badge,” I teased her. “You won a date with
me
.”

“I hope that won’t be a common reward for other winners,” she said, making me chuckle.

“No, this was a custom-made reward for you only.”

“Lucky me.”

“I’m glad you’ve liked your prize. Since you are my mate, I had to vouch for you.”

“To whom?”

“To the king.”

“There is actually a king?” she asked, looking surprised. “How old-fashioned! I thought there was some sort of committee that ruled over the town and decided about the supernaturals’s business.”

“There is, but there’s also a king.”

“A vampire king?” I nodded. She seemed absorbed. “When can I meet him?”

“When you pledge your allegiance to him.”

“Well, that sucks. I don’t want to pledge my allegiance to anyone whom I’ve never met. That’s extremely old-fashioned. Besides, why would I want to obey a king? I’m really happy living in a republican country.”

I thought she had an incredible sense of humor, but she had a lot to learn about the ways of my town.

“You are my mate, Anna. You need to take your place by my side in this community. Part of being accepted by the community is pledging to our king. You need to prove your loyalty so others trust you, and there won’t be any more secrets between us. I hope.”

Anna sat quietly, staring blankly at me. Maybe I was moving too fast; maybe I was pressuring her too soon. But we were mates. I wanted her to be part of my life and I wanted to be part of hers.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, continuing to eat.

I thought she would be a lot more excited about my news, but there was something peculiar about her attitude. While I didn’t think that she was a spy, I knew she had a secret. Something more than the way her parents died; something that had made her become so reclusive and suspicious of people in general.

After Anna had told me how her parents died, and about the hard time she had endured after that, my protective instincts grew even stronger. It was like I couldn’t breathe if I wasn’t next to her. Besides, we had a lot more in common than she realized. There was another issue bothering me; it went by the name of Sasha. The princess hadn’t tried anything against Annabel… yet. Maybe her uncle had put her in her place or sent her away. I didn’t know, but I had made sure that she wouldn’t cause me any trouble or even think about hurting Annabel. That meant going to talk directly to the prince.

“Anna,” I whispered, feeling my heart hurt inside my chest. “You don’t want to leave me, do you?”

She stared at me with surprised eyes. “Why would you think that?”

“It’s been two weeks since you learned that we are mates. You are still leaving on the weekends… And you seem to come back sadder on Monday. Why can’t you just tell your family about us? Why can’t I meet your cousin Jason?” I was fishing with that question, but I needed something to reassure me about her mysterious escapes on the weekends.

“I told you that I really need to leave for the weekends. We talked about this when we first started to date.”

“I know, but I would like to know where you go and what’s so important that it keeps you awake on Friday nights, counting the hours in the clock until you hit the road.”

“Did you bring me to a restaurant so I couldn’t evade your questions?”

My eyes lingered on her face. She was right: I was putting her in an uncomfortable position in a public place. This was no place to talk about it. There were too many prying eyes.

“I’m sorry. I just wish that you talked more about your family.”

“What do you want to know?”

“When can I meet your cousin?”

“I don’t know, Shane. He doesn’t know about us.”

“Why not?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.

“He’s… territorial about me.”

“In what way?”

“Well, we are both hybrids. He’s half-panther and half-human. After my parents’s death, we moved to live with him and his mom. His dad had been killed. He was a human. So, you must imagine that, after what happened to my brother, he’s been really protective of me.”

“There’s nothing wrong about protecting you. But I’m here now. I’m protecting you now. It’s my duty, because I’m your mate, therefore, I’m now part of your family, whether he likes it or not.” I was being really straightforward, but, in my defense, felines and werewolves didn’t mingle under normal circumstances. We weren’t a natural enemy because we were shifters and we weren’t overpowered by our instincts, but felines were extremely territorial about their blood relationships. In their natural order of things, if Anna had been a pure panther shifter, it would be expected that she would find a mate amongst her kind. Blood ties meant nothing to supernatural beings, because soul-mates didn’t have the restrictions of DNA or moral standards like humans. It didn’t matter if Anna and Jason were cousins—if they were mates, they would be together and procreate. “Were you promised to him in marriage?” I wondered. That would explain a lot. If they thought they didn’t have a soul-mate, their family may have arranged some sort of union between them. Her cousin could be under the impression that Annabel belonged to him. Maybe she was afraid to tell me that. Afraid of starting a war.

“Of course not. My parents wouldn’t do something as old-fashioned and stupid as that. They wanted me to find my place in the world, even if they were led to believe that hybrids didn’t have a soul-mate.”

Arranged marriages were extremely farfetched in a world where soul-mates were designed by the gods. But there were reported cases of that happening. Furthermore, only soul-mates were able to procreate. However, I had no idea if hybrids were naturally fertile like human women; consequently, the soul-mate rule wouldn’t apply to them.

“Is he in love with you?” I asked. I wanted to know what was awaiting me when I met her cousin.

“Jason is a Casanova. He loves no one. He likes to fool around and have a new girlfriend each week, sometimes each night.”

“That doesn’t mean that he’s not in love with you,” I stated. His erratic behavior wasn’t a sign that he didn’t want Annabel. If anything, it was the elusive behavior of a boy having fun or substituting girl after girl because he couldn’t be with the one he wanted in the first place. “The fact that you haven’t told him about us means that you know that he would be upset about it because he has feelings for you.”

“You are being paranoid. I just didn’t tell him about us because he doesn’t believe that hybrids can have soul-mates. And because he has nothing to do with my private life.”

“Anna…”

“Shane, if I tell him about us, he will want me to leave this place and never come back.”

I stood in silence, analyzing her reactions. She was telling the truth. Maybe she had no idea if Jason was in love with her or not, but Jason’s opinion was important to her.

“I don’t want him to ruin our happiness,” she mumbled after taking a drink of water and sighing deeply.

“Your place is here with me now,” I stated, rattled by the fact that her cousin thought that he could make decisions about her life.

She put down the glass and folded her arms, looking at me sideways.

“Men are all hard-headed idiots when it comes to protecting those they view as a responsibility. I’m capable of deciding by myself where I belong or where I don’t belong.”

“So why are you so afraid of telling him that you are with me?”

“Because I don’t want you to be his enemy, nor do I want him to be mad at me. I’m trying to find the best time to talk to him. Now isn’t the best time. There are too many things at stake, and Jason is on a really important mission.” She closed her mouth with an audible click and looked away. I guessed she’d said more than she’d intended to. She put three fingers over her temple, as if experiencing a headache. “I thought this was a date, not an interrogation.”

“So, how is school?” I asked, changing the subject and taking a sip of wine. She opened her eyes and stared at me, unsure if I was really trying to lighten the mood or simply being ironic. I’d had experience with this type of argument. I wouldn’t keep insisting. Besides, I was good at assembling the pieces of her puzzling life. That night, I knew a bit more about her than I’d known the day before.

“I’ll try to talk to him this weekend,” she whispered with a soft, sad voice while avoiding my gaze. It made me happy but also upset, because I had made her sad.

“Have you decided about what movie you want to watch after dinner?” I asked, putting my hand over the table to ask for hers. She placed her hand in mine, and I grabbed it, caressing her palm with my thumb.

“I didn’t really think much about it. But my students were talking about a new superhero movie. It seems to be extremely good.”

“I hope it’s better than the last one we saw.”

“If I recall correctly, you fell asleep. I hope you don’t fall asleep in this one.”

“Of course not. I have a lot more that I want to do tonight before I fall asleep,” I said with a mischievous smirk and husky voice, leaning down to kiss her hand. “Have I told you how gorgeous you look tonight?”

“Twice,” she said, smiling and loosening up again. “But I don’t mind you repeating yourself.”

I chuckled. “Aren’t you missing our kitchen right now?” I teased. She giggled, remembering that we had a tendency to leave our meal unfinished when I played with her like that.

“Yesterday was pretty fun, too,” she teased back, reminding me of our afternoon in the woods. We had gone for a walk and ended up leaving the trail and running through the forest. She needed to get familiar with those woods. Therefore, next week I was planning to teach her new tracks and places where people could hide, and where it was more dangerous to go at night. My wolf could use the run, and her vampire form was the most enticing and captivating thing to watch as I enjoyed the sunlight.

“You are the most gorgeous thing in the world, no matter what shape you take,” I whispered, high on her scent and my love for her.

“You are a really bad influence on me,” she stated with a teasing smile, her eyes almost glowing.

“Are you talking about skinny dipping in the river?” I asked, beaming as I remembered how good it was to make love to her in the middle of the forest, surrounded by the birds and the wild animals.

“It would have been embarrassing if someone had caught us there.”

“No one goes there, unless they are tracking someone or something. Besides, you needed to hunt and, after, we needed to clean ourselves from the blood.”

“It was fun,” she whispered, blushing and lowering her eyes.

“What was fun? The hunting or the bathing?”

“Both,” she answered.

“I was happily surprised. You had hunted before, and you don’t seem to need as much blood as other vampires.”

“My vampire form hasn’t become bloodthirsty yet. I’ve never bitten a person. I normally drink from hospital bags or animals,” she explained, and I nodded. I had no idea how things worked for hybrids. I knew pureblood vampires would mature at a certain age, becoming dependent on blood, and would then stop eating human food. Shifters like me needed to hunt to survive and eat raw meat from time to time. However, hybrids were probably different. They were still trying to figure out where they fit into our world.

“There are a lot more hybrids in the world. We should probably look for information about it.”

“There aren’t many panther and vampire hybrids in the world,” she declared. I had to agree with that. “But I’m okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“I know you can take care of yourself. But I love you, so it’s hard for me not to worry about you.”

She smiled, her eyes sparkling. Then she leaned closer to offer her lips to me. I leaned forward and kissed her. Displaying that level of affection in a public place wasn’t the most appropriate thing to do, but I couldn’t care less about what others thought.

“How is your appetizer?” she wondered, watching me play with the food.

“Edible, but too sweet.”

“I can buy you a burger after this,” she joked.

“I don’t know, I’m more inclined to drink champagne and eat strawberries in a Jacuzzi,” I mumbled, staring at her to watch her reaction.