Chapter Eight

It hurt being rejected. I wasn't going to try and pretend it didn't. There was no pretending that he was red-flag central and not that attractive. If anything, he was the opposite of that. He didn't sense we'd make a good pair and decided not to lead either of us on. I could respect that.

It still sucked. I just really liked him. Was I feeling a mating pull? No. If there had been one, neither of us would've been fine just walking away. But still… I wanted to spend time with him. Which meant, I needed to distract myself and stop thinking about Armel. Who knew? Maybe there would be another hottie tonight wearing green flags and jeans that had me jealous of the denim. It could happen.

As I tried to get back to work, I found myself more and more distracted by his presence instead of forgetting about him like I wanted. There was this attraction, this pull; that much was clear. It would have been nice to have explored it further, but I respected his decision. Oh well, there was enough to keep me busy and distracted—or at least that was my goal.

A few minutes later, everything changed. Someone brushed past me, and I spun around to avoid dropping what was in my hand. That was pretty normal. I wasn't the best at this job by any means. What wasn't normal was that a group of scents tickled my nose, and one of them—one of them made everything make sense, made everything click. I was attracted to Armel because he was mine…he just wasn't the only one.

Before I could think about what to do, Armel's hand was on my arm. "Can you take a break?"

I just nodded, unsure what to say. He ran his hand down my arm, intertwining our fingers. It wasn't me sinking into his arms the way I longed to, but there wasn't time for that. We had a third, and we needed to find him.

"You scent it too, yeah?" I needed to be sure I wasn't imagining things. "You scent—"

"Our mate?" he asked, finishing my sentence for me.

"There's another, that's why we almost made sense." I squeezed his hand tight. "I can't tell where it's coming from. Can you?"

"No. Me neither. There are too many people in here, but we can find him…we will find him."

I agreed, and we wandered through the crowds. Eventually, we caught his scent and followed it back to a human, a human who carried our mate's scent but also wasn't our mate.

"What do we do?" Armel asked.

If it was a shifter, we could just tell them what was happening. That would be easy. But it wasn't. This person was most assuredly a human, which meant, scents and mating wouldn't be anything they'd know anything about.

"Play it cool?" It was the best suggestion I had and pretty much no help at all.

"Hey." Armel caught the man's attention. "Are you here with somebody else?"

The human looked up at us as if Armel had been speaking another language, then he looked focused on our joined hands. "Yes?" He phrased it as a question.

"Did they go to the bathroom?" I couldn't think of where else they could be, but also it didn't scent like he'd actually been to the table. The entire situation was weird like that.

"How do you know him?" The human was protective, but not in a possessive way. I liked him already.

"I don't know him," I admitted, and then he looked back to our joined hands, and his face lit up with understanding.

"Oh, no way!" His smile could light up a room. For a human, he seemed pretty darn observant. "You haven't met him yet, have you?"

We both shook our heads. There was no denying that.

"And you guys are together?"

We lifted our joined hands. "Yes," I said, sounding so confident, given we hadn't even spoken about it. But that's what true mates were, right? Like a sure thing? Not that we should ever take each other for granted.

"He's your mate…both of yours, isn't he?"

And just like that, everything was easier. We sat down and nodded.

"Yes. Can you help us find him?"

I wanted to ask how he knew, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was finding him.

"I'm his roommate, not his anything else," the human clarified. "Name's Dez."

It was sweet that he assured us there was nothing between he and our mate, but also, I hadn't been concerned about that at all. He was our fated. And we were his.

We introduced ourselves, but I was done with the small talk. I wanted to find our mate even if this man was his roommate, making the find-him-or-you'll-miss-him stress far less.

Come to find out, there had been some confusion in line and our mate had been cut by some people. The bouncer hadn't realized it and let one of the two of them in before shutting the door because they were at capacity. We weren't. Not really. But they liked to stagger guests to make it easier on everyone.

"I was going to stay out with him since he couldn't come in with me, but he told me to go on ahead of him and get us a table and I did." I wasn't sure how he managed it, but yay. "He should be here any minute now. It looks like they're opening the door pretty regularly. Come to think of it, that means he probably should have been here already."

We were already up and out of our seats, giving a half-wave goodbye before weaving through the crowd to get to the door. Our mate was here, and it was time for us to meet him.

Once we got to the door, we stopped.

"We'll find him," Armel assured me.

I wished I had his confidence.