“Do you have a name, or do I keep calling you Barney? Or Xian?”
“Phares. That is my name. What is yours?”
“Jana,” she said. “Otherwise known as the stupidest female on Earth.”
He blinked. “Earth?”
“We’re not famous out here, huh? I’m not surprised. We don’t have space travel like this yet.”
“How do you plan on getting back to your homeworld, then?” he asked. “If you do not have transport options?”
“I figured I could just get dropped off or something. I don’t know. I hadn’t got that far.”
“How did you get here?”
“I told you. I walked through an arch and wound up here.”
“What arch?”
“I don’t know. It was in a park on my world.”
Something about this made no sense to him. Humanoids didn’t just cross stars and appear in places. That was not how it worked. She had to have experienced a vortex or a portal or—
“There you are!” cried two more Terran females. One had short dark hair, and one had long hair, like that Terran Empress.
Jana froze. “We should be getting out of here, not auctioned off to the next bidder!”
“What?” Phares roared.
All three females stared at him, their eyes wide. Jana stepped away from him, closer to her companions.
And from another direction came the female, Re-lee, from the Intergalactic Dating Agency.
“Oh good, you found each other,” she said.
Phares blinked.
Jana pointed at him. “Wait,Barney’s my buyer?”
“I didn’t buy you,” Phares snarled.
“Whatever. You requested me! I was stolen from my home—”
“Did she just call him Barney?” one of the other females said, and the other started to giggle.
Whatever this Barney thing was, Phares was not fond of it at all.
He took a breath. “I applied to find a mate from applicants who were also looking for partners.” He glared at Re-lee. “How dare you steal her from her home!”
Re-lee held up her hands. “Wait, please. We need to discuss this.”
“Found you,” Erzo said and glanced at the rest of the crowd they’d drawn. “Well, hello, ladies.”
“Oh my god, he’s green,” one of them said. “With a tail. He has a tail.”
Olmed joined them as well. “Did you find—oh. Re-lee.” He gestured to the women. “Are these our mates?”
All three women stared.
