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LENA KNEW SHE WAS TERRIBLE company on the way back to Human House. And she scowled at the name. It had started as a bit of a joke, a fun way to refer to the place they’d been given to live. Somehow over the course of the last month it had stuck.
The place had seemed palatial when they’d moved in, but now Lena couldn’t walk two feet without tripping over someone. At least they all had their own rooms. Though even sitting alone in hers reminded her of the debt they owed to Crowze, a Synnr aristocrat.
Just like Solan.
That made Lena’s scowl deepen. But neither Emily nor Luci asked about it. And once they were back to Human House she rushed to her room before she did something useless. Like scream.
Or cry.
No one was allowed to see her cry. Ever.
She felt like dirt. Less than dirt. Here she was again, forced to face the fact that she had nothing. No job. No family. No future. Friends, she supposed, she had, and she was lucky for it. But she didn’t want handouts or favors getting her out of trouble.
Why had Solan been there? Why had he helped?
The clerk who’d finally let her out after more than an hour of detainment seemed impressed. Apparently the son of Lureyne Zadra didn’t help just anybody. Not that Lena had any clue about who Lureyne Zadra was.
But it was one more thing to add to her mounting list of debts.
And she couldn’t put up with it for another day. She needed a job. Needed something. Crowze might not miss the money he was throwing at them, Solan might not care that he’d essentially bailed her out of jail, but she cared, and she wanted to pay them back. Maybe not dollar for dollar—or whatever the damn currency on this planet was called—but she needed to make the effort.
What could she do? She’d been a soldier back on Earth, then a cop, then a DEA agent. She knew discipline, struggle, protection. But spending time in that cell had given her a bad taste for what policework meant in Osais, and she put applying for a job with them at the bottom of her mental list.
She was good at protecting people, and at investigating things, building cases that wouldn’t crumble even under the best defense attorneys that money could buy. And even though she wasn’t on Earth anymore, it didn’t mean she couldn’t use the skills she already had. The Synnrs had a military. They had cops. They probably had private investigators. There had to be a space for her somewhere.
She’d never felt more connected to her grandparents, but at least they’d chosen to leave Lahore. And they’d been able to choose to move to the US from Pakistan. It wasn’t a different planet.
But it must have felt that way for two young adults still struggling to learn the language and carve out a life for themselves.
Lena rubbed her fingers over the bumps behind her ear. The subdermal translator she’d been fitted with was a miracle. It allowed her to understand just about everything the aliens said to her, though she was pretty sure there was a profanity filter, given that some words didn’t get translated. And she knew her grandparents would be yelling at her if they saw her wallowing like this. Neither of them had been handed a thing, but they’d managed.
And there was no telling what her mother would say if she saw Lena.
Not that she would ever see Lena again.
Despair threatened to overwhelm her, but Lena shoved it aside once more. She couldn’t sink into it. Nothing good would come of that, and she’d never find her path.
She could cry when night came.
Of course, the way days worked on this moon, night didn’t come during this season.
All the better.
She pushed off her bed and used the small attached bathroom to wipe off her face. Dust from the city had mixed with the tear tracks she was ignoring for the moment. Vigorous scrubbing brightened her up. It was as good as it was going to get. And it wasn’t like she was going on a date. No, she was asking for a job.
Did someone in the house have makeup?
No. No time to waste.
If asked, Lena wouldn’t say she snuck out of Human House, but she picked up her pace when she thought she heard someone coming down the hall. She was on a mission, and that mission didn’t involve small talk.
Human House was located in a picturesque corner of Crowze’s estate. Tall grass grew up all around it and the bright sky spread far overhead, fluffy clouds making it look like she’d stepped out of some pastoral painting. They were too far away from the city to see any buildings or hear any traffic. It was serene.
Lena was tired of serenity.
The walk over to the main house took about ten minutes. There were vehicles that looked a bit like golf carts that could be used to travel between the different buildings, but today Lena wanted to walk. Crowze’s whole family lived on his estate, and he had siblings and parents with him in the mansion, but Lena hadn’t met them. She wasn’t sure if that was on purpose and she didn’t care. The humans weren’t barred from visiting Crowze’s place—they’d been given free rein of the grounds—but they were still working out what that really meant.
It was only in the last week that they’d truly started to believe that they wouldn’t be snatched up by Apsyns again.
Lena made it up the front steps before her doubts started to creep in. Was this just another way of infringing on Crowze’s hospitality? Would it be better for her to head back into the city and find a way to do this on her own?
She turned around, but her getaway was stopped when she spotted Crowze coming up the steps behind her.
He smiled and greeted her. It was a nice smile, and a genteel greeting. It was almost difficult to believe he was a soldier. Today he wore a light blue suit-like outfit, though the tight fit and long jacket reminded her more of something from the 1800s, and he carried a thick book with him. “It was a perfect day to read in the shade,” he said.
Clearly he didn’t have a problem with leisure. “It is pleasant,” Lena agreed.
“Was there something I could help you with?” He nodded towards the door before carefully stepping past her and opening it, then ushering her in. It happened so quickly that Lena didn’t have a second to come up with an excuse not to enter his house. She followed after him. He set his book on a side table and shrugged off his jacket to reveal a dark shirt underneath. He kept on his shoes, so Lena did the same. She was still figuring out the etiquette.
They ended up in a room that overlooked the front yard, sun streaming in through the windows. Instead of a couch, there were half a dozen separate chairs, all in different shades of blue, in a semi-circle facing the large windows.
Crowze took a seat. Lena didn’t want to stay for long and chat, but if she kept standing there she’d feel like she was giving a report to a superior, and that was a feeling she could do without. She sat, but perched on the edge of the seat, ready to spring up at the first opportunity.
“I wanted to thank you again for all you’re doing,” Lena started. “I know you’ve said you don’t want repayment, but—”
Crowze held up a hand. “Please, don’t think of it. I’d be insulted if you did.”
Lena grit her teeth. She’d seen this game play out plenty of times on Earth and there were no winners. She set it aside... for now. “Of course. In the spirit of that, then, there is one more favor I’d like to ask.”
Crowze sat back in his seat and smiled. “Please.” Did he like doing favors? Did he get off on it? Or had Lena just seen the bad in so many people that she couldn’t recognize a genuinely kind person when she came across one?
Whatever his feelings, she’d take the help. “I’ve been working in some form or another since I was eighteen. I started as a soldier, then went into law enforcement. And I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have something to do. I’m not sure what the process is to find employment, if I need any sort of identification or government clearance. But I want to work. Can you help me?”
Crowze’s eyebrows scrunched down as he considered her question, and the humming sound he made didn’t give her much hope. “Your residency papers are in the process of being filed. It can be difficult to get work before it’s all official, or so I’ve heard. But let me do some asking. Is it the work or the money? I ask because it may be easier to find something on a volunteer basis.”
“I don’t want to be a leech,” Lena insisted. “But I really just need to be doing something.” She hated how needy it came out, but she was desperate.
“Give me a few days and I’ll see what I can come up with. And once your paperwork is filed, all of Aorsa will be open to you.”
“How long will that take?” Lena tried not to compare everything to Earth, but she only had the one frame of reference.
And Crowze’s wince told her she’d be waiting awhile.
“Thank you,” she said again. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but it was a start.
She left him there and headed out, surprised to find Zac pacing in front of the house. He jumped when he saw her come outside. “Oh! Hi.” His pale cheeks blushed easily and his eyes darted around like he was guilty of something.
If she’d been interrogating him, she’d know she was onto something. But she just said “Hello.” She was in a slightly better mood, now that she’d taken the first step to finding a job, but she still wasn’t feeling chatty. Luckily for Zac, she wasn’t feeling rude either.
He was a bit younger than her, closer to Emily’s age, and had been working on a PhD in Literature at Notre Dame when he’d been taken. The two of them had been snatched around the same time, Lena in 2006, Zac in 2007, which made conversation with him a bit easier and less prone to minefields about technology or the state of politics. Lena was pretty sure Emily, who had come from 2019, had been joking about some of the things she’d said.
But the world had always been a crazy place.
“Crowze is inside if you needed something.” She nodded back toward the door.
Zac’s eyes bugged out and he shook his head. “No, that’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “I was just going for a walk.”
The grass where he’d been pacing for some time was flat. But Lena didn’t call him on it. “I heard Grace is giving another Aorsa 101 session this week,” she offered.
How did his cheeks get even pinker? Seriously, the guy should never play cards. “Is that so?” He could not pull off nonchalant.
And Lena didn’t have time to torture him. “See you later, Zac.” She didn’t offer to walk with him and he didn’t head back with her. She could deal with the solitude.
When she got back to her room a thick envelope was waiting on the ground in front of her door. Lena tried to make sense of the words, but her translator only worked on spoken language.
But Emily had a pair of glasses in her office that could help her read.
Lena snuck into the office and snatched them up; Emily wouldn’t mind. She looked back down at the paper and it was a bit disorienting. The words still didn’t look like English, but her mind understood.
She ripped open the envelope and read the first line of the thick paper.
MATCH COMPATIBILITY RESULTS
Match compatibility? When had she—oh. She hadn’t wanted to be tested for Match compatibility, but she hadn’t been given the choice. The now dead captain of Oz’s ship had commanded that all humans be tested. And since they already had Lena’s DNA from hooking her up to machines to keep her alive, she hadn’t been able to prevent it, unlike the rest of the humans.
She had a Match?
Curiosity got the better of her, and Lena’s eyebrows shot up as she read the name of her potential soulmate.
Well.
That was interesting.
***
PEACE. QUIET. THEY were the things Solan loved about his small cottage on his family’s estate. He’d been living alone there since he’d reached adulthood and he couldn’t imagine anything better.
It wasn’t much. Four bedrooms, a dining room, an atrium, a sitting room, and a large kitchen. Enough for a small family. Perhaps a bit too much for him, but with that much space he could truly enjoy the quiet.
And he wouldn’t have it for much longer. In only a couple of years he’d be expected to step into his mother’s place as the head of the family and lead the Zadras. He didn’t want it.
It felt like a betrayal to even think it, but he didn’t. He’d been a soldier for his entire adult life and he was good at it. He knew the rules and regulations, knew the chain of command. He knew who had his back and where to shoot his spark. Sure, there were politics and backbiting, but it was nothing like the intrigues the aristocratic families got up to.
At least he wouldn’t be expected to take a seat in the government. That was a small relief.
The display on the wall chimed and lit up, informing him of a lunch appointment with his mother. He wondered if other families set appointments like his, but he’d never asked. It wouldn’t change anything. He doubted Oz did, but he didn’t like to highlight the differences between himself and his best friend. Eventually he feared that Oz would get tired of all the braz that Solan put up with and would end their friendship. But he hadn’t yet, and it had been more than a decade. Maybe Solan feared for nothing.
The clouds were full in the sky as he walked down the gravel path and over the hill to the main estate. The hill was artificial, built to improve the privacy of Solan’s house by some ancestor a few generations ago. Though Aorsa had become the sole home of the Synnrs only a few decades before, many Synnr families had been living there for more than a century, his included.
His calves burned and he cursed that unknown ancestor. A hedge would have provided just as much privacy as a hill, and he wouldn’t have started to sweat by the time he was at the top. He let his wings unfurl and beat them, propelling himself forward with great gusts of wind.
He couldn’t fly, Zulir wings didn’t work that way, but he had his own tricks.
By the time he made it to the main house, most of the sweat was gone, and he hid his wings away. He didn’t like to leave them on display.
His mother did.
It could be seen as a sign of aggression to flash wings out at a random stranger, but leaving them unfurled was a different matter. And Lureyne Zadra had beautiful wings.
They were the first thing anyone noticed about her. At first they looked pure white, something so rare that Solan had only seen it one other time. But they were actually full of pastel strands in lavenders and blues and pinks that gave off a pearlescent glow.
She wore a bright white dress to make the wings look even brighter, and her dark hair provided a stark contrast. His mother believed strongly in the power of appearance, and from the way her eyes flicked up and down when he entered the room, she found his less than ideal.
He wore dark pants, a black top, and a stylish long jacket. It was nothing special, but no one could complain about the appropriateness. No one except his mother.
She said nothing, though, letting her silent judgement sit there. Solan had long ago learned how to ignore that, so he did.
They sat in the small dining room and a servant brought in trays of food and a bottle of sparkling juice. The meal began with pleasantries, as if he hadn’t seen his mother nearly every day for the past month. And, as always, it soon turned to family events.
“Were you able to file your brother’s marriage papers?” she asked.
Solan sipped his soup before replying. “Of course. All will be ready in plenty of time.”
“And your sister’s Match papers? The announcement?”
“Yes, mother.” She had to have known he’d done it; he’d forwarded the electronic confirmations to her. But she liked to remind him of who was really in control.
Would he be playing these games with his heir in thirty years? He hoped not.
“I say we should file the marriage paperwork for your sister. With the way things are going, they’ll want to wed before the year is out.” His mother wore a satisfied smile. Micia was the first Zadra in his generation to find her Match, but she insisted that there was nothing beyond friendship between herself and her partner, Keni, a young woman from another aristocratic family.
The Match was so perfect that Solan almost didn’t believe it. Keni’s family perfectly complemented the Zadras, though they weren’t quite as socially powerful. Even better, Keni was directly related to the Queen, though her place in the line of succession guaranteed she’d never sit on the throne. There was no question of divided loyalty between Synnrs and Apsyns, as sometimes happened among the nobility, and she seemed like a genuinely decent person.
Solan agreed his sister would fall for her Match in no time, but he wasn’t about to force things.
“Ortid’s wedding is more than enough excitement,” he said. Normally a bonding ceremony and a wedding wouldn’t happen in a single family in one season, but with war on the way, his mother wanted these things settled.
“We still have time for three weddings this year.” She looked at him over the rim of her glass, a small smile on her lips.
This was the part of his daily meals he hated most. The war could not start soon enough. “I agreed to submit my data to the Matching database, mother. I can’t help that they’ve found no one in the twelve years they’ve been looking. There’s no reason to start marriage proceedings.”
“One does not have anything to do with the other.” She set her glass down with a clink and glanced away.
It was a point scored, but Solan didn’t feel good about it. Not all Matched units got married. Most marriages weren’t between Matches. But things got messy when one spouse found a Match after the vows were read.
But Solan wasn’t going to talk about his father right now.
Or ever.
“I do wish you’d let me monitor potential Matches, at least,” his mother rallied. Neither of them mentioned Solan’s real issue.
“I’m sure I’ll be contacted if something comes up. No need to monitor.” At least, that’s how he thought it worked. There had been a lot of paperwork to sign and he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d agreed to. It had been a long time ago.
“But these things must be checked for their appropriateness. I heard that soldier friend of yours Matched to a human.” She leaned in close to say it quietly, as if they weren’t alone and guaranteed complete privacy.
“Emily is a lovely girl,” Solan said, refusing to stoop to his mother’s implication. “I’m sure you’ll meet her at her Matching ceremony. I’ve invited them to use our estate.”
She pursed her lips, but quickly recovered to a smile. “Of course. How kind of you.”
It was an open secret that the Synnr aristocracy were little better than Apsyns when it came to interactions with non-Zulir. They’d insist that they wouldn’t stoop to the Apsyns’ outright hatred, and they’d never kidnap humans to use for medical experiments. And, of course, they wouldn’t allow them to be traded as slaves.
But Match with one?
Perhaps it was better to remain unmatched.
Not that Solan agreed. Not really. A Match was a Match. The humans he’d met were all perfectly acceptable. More than acceptable. He thought of Lena, her dark hair, her protective nature, the way she was born to fight. If she were Zulir she’d be one amazing Match.
But he couldn’t imagine inflicting his world on her... or any human. They’d have to fight for acceptance every step of the way. They’d be snubbed by the more conservative families. And it would spill over onto his siblings. She’d grow to hate him eventually.
That was why he couldn’t have a human.
Not that he was looking for one.
And why had he thought of Lena?
“If I’m ever Matched, the only compatibility that matters would be between me and my Match. But there’s no way to force it, so why dwell?” Given the gleam in his mother’s eye, she would have forced it if she could. Solan was thankful they’d managed to destroy all the Apsyn research about Matches. Someone could have done a lot of damage with it.
The rest of their lunch was uneventful and Solan was thankful to be dismissed. He found Micia in the entryway looking down at her communicator with a smile on her face.
“Message from Keni?” he asked with a grin.
His sister’s gaze snapped up to meet his, eyes wide and crackling with her spark. “What? Why?” She shoved her communicator into her pocket quickly, as if she was afraid Solan would snatch it from her and read the message.
Oh yeah, they’d be married soon enough. There was no stopping it now.
He gave his sister a hug and headed for the door.
“Wait!” she called after him. “There was someone at the gatehouse waiting for you. Some human. Um... Leda?”
“Lena?” He whipped around and felt his spark flare to life.
His sister shrugged. “Maybe. How many humans do you know?”
“More than you, brat.” He pulled out his own communicator and let the gatehouse know Lena was welcome at his quarters.
But why would she come here?
He couldn’t wait to find out.
