When she’d asked Darfan for clarification, he’d just muttered that he was getting some worrying reports from the Draell’s Lord High Commander, Sekari. Kodran was the leader of the Sky-Reign clan, but most Draell clans were under Sekari’s rule. Sekari had, supposedly, said something about Kodran being an unsuitable match.
So why hadn’t Darfan just said that in the first place?
And why had she ever thought that going to work halfway across the galaxy from Earth was a good idea?
Maybe she could just try again tomorrow. If she called in sick, Darfan would probably just get someone else to tell Kodran his contract was terminated.
Then she wouldn’t have to look into those amazing green eyes and tell him “Thanks but no thanks” when what she really wanted to say was “Oh god, yesplease.”
Maybe he had some exotic intergalactic pheromones that turned women into gibbering, needy puddles of goo.
It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’d seen since Talia had introduced her to Starcrossed’s secret. She still wasn’t sure she was cut out for the job of personal assistant at analien dating agency,on anotherplanet.
Back on Earth, she’d been a Jill of all trades at Starcrossed Dating Agency, working as web designer and photographer and blogger and whatever else for her best friend Talia, and Talia’s husband Lukan.
Then, a few weeks ago, she’d found out the truth – Lukan was an alien wolf shifter called a Vulfan. He took some kind of drug that suppressed his shifter tendencies when he was visiting Earth.
Rosamund and Lukan used something called a transporter to instantaneously send them to Lukan’s home planet most nights and weekends. They only maintained the agency on Earth because they needed to recruit human females for their dating agency.
The reason they needed human females was because of something called the Population War. The war had been started by rogue cyborgs who, decades ago, had created a virus that had killed off most of the females of dozens of shifter species. Their goal had been to wipe out life on other planets, so they could take them for themselves.
The cyborgs had been beaten back and now lived in space, and the surviving species on the planets they had decimated were struggling to repopulate. Females were in desperately short supply.
Since all humanoid species were descended from common ancestors, human females could successfully mate with shifter species. When the Earth women became pregnant, they genetically mutated into the species of the child they were bearing.
Why had Talia told her all this after keeping it secret for all that time? Well, there was a brand new branch of Starcrossed on a planet called Agora, and Talia was too pregnant to go and help out there, so she needed Rosamund to step in.
And not only that, Talia hoped that Rosamund might make a love connection with a sexy alien herself.
“Ha,” Rosamund muttered. “As if.”
Her love life on Earth had been bad enough; she had been born with an unfailing asshole detector that led her to the worst possible guys, every time. Men who cheated, vanished without explanation, or emptied her bank account. How could she hope for love with someone from another species when she couldn’t even understand human men?
Also, her sister Alison was still on Earth, finishing up nursing school. However, Talia had insisted that wouldn’t be a problem. Rosamund could travel back to Earth any time she wanted, as long as she kept the existence of alien life a secret…or she could encourage Alison to join the dating agency and find a sexy alien of her own.
A vision of Kodran flashed before her, huge and terrifying and alluring. Again. She tried to ignore the butterflies in her stomach – chaos butterflies; the kind that flap their wings and create a furious storm half a world away – and give herself a stern talking-to. She had a job to do, and the sooner she could erase the big scaly jerk from her brain, the better off she’d be.
She thought about the soft, pink curve of his lips and groaned.
Screw this. Darfan could just get off his furry ass and go fire Kodran himself.
She turned around to head back to the walkway that would return her to the tower where she was staying. When Starcrossed had opened their new branch on Agora a month ago, they’d rented a tower full of suites where their employees and clients stayed.
As she turned, she almost bumped into a silver-skinned female robot. She looked young, like a teenager, and had a flared poodle skirt and curly metal hair. She was of the style they called a “retrobot”, because they looked like 1950s Earth humans. Except for being made out of silvery metal from head to toe. They were frequently fairly glitchy, and were known for having minds of their own.
This one, in fact, looked as if she had lost her mind.
The female robot spread her arms to block Talia’s path. “You are not going anywhere,” she growled, her tone menacing. Her eyes glowed red, and her fingertips crackled, shooting out little lightning bolts.
