by Kate Rudolph
Lena was the one who’d gotten Emily and Luci, along with two other humans, out of the research facility where they’d been held on Kilrym. And in the process, she’d been severely injured. He hadn’t been sure she would survive, and he didn’t like to think of what she’d looked like hooked up to the medbot. It was a strong first impression to have of a person, but if it taught Solan anything, it was that the woman wasn’t weak.
She’d been on her feet in a matter of days and running right back into that facility to help rescue the rest of the humans. It didn’t surprise him in the least to learn that she’d tried to protect Luci in the market today.
But he couldn’t simply take Emily’s word for it. “What does your report say?” he asked the clerk.
She narrowed her eyes at him, no doubt recognizing his accent as one of the highborn. He could have hidden it, but what would be the point when he’d be throwing his name around in a minute?
The clerk pulled up the file. “It says this human was detained by two guards in the central market after complaints of destroying property and disturbing the peace. She claimed to be chasing after a thief but no evidence of one has turned up.”
“Hey—” Luci started to make a noise but was cut off by a glare from the clerk.
“There have been complaints over the last few weeks of other thefts,” the clerk added. “Which will be taken into account.”
“This sounds like a misunderstanding to me. Has her paperwork been processed?” The Patrol and Public Safety department loved writing and filing reports and everything got more complicated once the higher-ups got involved. He had no doubt that Emily was ready to use her Earth skills to argue for Lena’s freedom, but right now he could hopefully use his knowledge of the system before anything got more complicated.
“It’s in the queue,” said the clerk with a dismissive shrug. “It’s been a busy day.”
Solan reached into his pocket, pulled out his identification card, and slid it across the desk. “If that’s the case, have her released into my custody and I’ll ensure that she’s educated about proper public conduct.”
He could feel Emily brimming with energy beside him and was positive she wanted to say something. No doubt he wouldn’t hear the end of it once this was done, but she’d thank him later.
Or not.
It didn’t particularly matter. He liked helping his friends, and Emily’s relationship to Oz made her his friend.
The clerk scanned his identification into the system and made a noise of surprise when his information showed up. “Are you related to the Honorable Lureyne Zadra?” she asked. Her voice had been neutral until now, but he recognized the tinge of awe creeping in.
“I am,” he confirmed. If this got back to his mother, she’d have an hour-long lecture for him about the abuse of his name.
“Give me a moment,” said the clerk. There was a flurry of movement as she typed something into her system and then sprang up and back towards the holding cells.
“What’s that all about?” Emily asked. She clearly wasn’t impressed by his family name, but she had no reason to be. And Solan didn’t want to have this conversation. He liked the way his friend’s Match acted around him and he didn’t want things to change.
“I hoped I could help,” was his answer.
And it looked like he had.
The clerk came back through the door with Lena walking behind her. And Solan looked his fill. Her skin had gotten even more golden under the near constant sunlight they received during this part of the year, and she looked much healthier than she had when they’d parted ways a month ago. He hadn’t realized what a difference that would make, but his body was paying attention now. He’d known she was attractive before, but now he wanted to get a closer look.
Their eyes locked and Lena glared. The clerk was talking to her, but they were far enough away and the room was loud enough that Solan couldn’t make out what she was saying. Was it about him?
That was conceited. But from the sheer malice in Lena’s gaze, it was hard to believe anything else.
Then the clerk was standing right in front of them and Lena was free. “Thank his lordship for his kindness,” the clerk said.
“I’m not a lord,” Solan was quick to point out. That was a level of trouble he’d hopefully never have to deal with. He was related to lords, but more than a dozen people would need to die for him to become eligible. “And there’s no need to thank me,” he added. But that only made Lena’s expression even darker.
“Thank you,” she said woodenly. “Your kindness is appreciated.” Then she turned to Emily and Luci. “Let’s get out of here.”
And the three of them were off without another word. The clerk looked ready to start up a conversation, and that was the last thing Solan wanted. He bade her farewell and made his way back to his original destination.
Maybe peacefully standing in a line for half an hour wouldn’t be so bad.
CHAPTER THREE
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 the
y 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.
