Jana hated the heat.

  The last couple of weeks, the temperatures had driven many people indoors, and Jana felt stupid for putting on jeans in this heat.

  Of course, that wasn't her issue at the moment.

  Meeting Polly was.

  Polly was Stefan's cousin, and if anything had happened to him, she would know. Jana wasn't great friends with Polly, but they'd spent time together over the last year. Did they go party and have girl days together? No, the relationship wasn't like that, but it was nice that Polly liked her.

  At least someone in his family seemed to.

  Polly had been standing near a tree in the shade as Jana approached. She had two cups in her hand, and as soon as Jana approached, she handed her the iced coffee.

  "Thanks," Jana said and took a sip. The cold brew tasted amazing and cold, and she could feel it going down her throat. It was so cool and soothing.

  "Vanilla latte, right?" Polly asked.

  "Always a good choice for me." She took a breath, hoping the drink would cool down her mind and her body. Every scenario had darted through her head on her way over, but if it was something serious and Stefan was hurt, wouldn’t Polly want her to come to the hospital? "So what's going on?”

  "You came pretty fast.”

  Jana raised her eyebrow. "I'm guessing it’s Stefan. Is he okay?"

  "Yes, this has to do with Stefan," Polly said, and instead took a sip of her drink.

  "Well, what? What is it?" Jana's worry consumed her. It overtook her. Had something happened to him? Was she gathering the courage to speak? "What's going on, Polly?”

  Polly closed her eyes for a second and opened them up, looking straight at Jana. "Stefan is cheating on you. Or rather, with you.”

  Jana blinked. "Wait, what?"

  Surely she didn't hear that right.

  "You said 'with me?' That doesn't make any sense. He's my boyfriend. How can he be cheating with me?" She grabbed the ring on her finger with its little diamond. "I have a ring, Polly.”

  Polly nodded. "I know. And I'm sorry. I don't know how else to tell you this, but to just say it. You're his side piece. You have been for two years." She shook her head. "I thought you were aware of the situation, honestly, until this past week.”

  "Wait, what? No. This is a mistake. You're wrong. I'm not anyone's side piece!" Jana took a step back. "Why would you tell me that? What's wrong with you? This is some kind of stupid joke, right? Like some family initiation or something?”

  Polly shook her head. "Jana, no. It's the truth.”

  She held up her hand. "I. Have. A. Ring!”

  Polly bit her lip. "So does every other side piece he's ever had. He buys those cheap rings by the gross from China. They're not real.”

  "You're lying! You're making this up!" Why would she do this? “I thought we were friends! Why would you hurt me like this?”

  “I’m doing this for you, not to you. I really thought you knew. Why do you think the family kept their distance?”

  "And no one said anything," Jana said. When his family hadn’t taken to her, she'd just assumed it was because they hadn't gotten to know her.

  She didn't want to believe what she was hearing.

  She didn't want to think it was the truth, but she felt it. In her gut.

  It was the confirmation she'd been dreading. All these little flags. Well, some were huge, in fact, but she’d just blindly ignored them. Just kept trusting him.

  Just like her damn mother.

  He never seemed to have family events to go to, and he was part of a large, extended family that otherwise had seemed close. He mentioned his siblings and family regularly.

  Then the other part of what Polly said hit her.

  The more important part. "So, you saw him this past week," Jana said. "He was here, in town?"

  "Yeah, of course.”

  "He doesn't travel for work?”

  "No, he doesn’t. You thought he traveled for work?” She shook her head as she pulled up photos on her phone from social media. "This was at my aunt's house for dinner.”

  It was Stefan, and a girl, a beautiful girl who looked like a brunette model with all the right curves. In a word, she was perfect, and she sat there, her arms around him, and he was kissing her back. Jana felt sick. She scrolled through the images and checked the name on the account. It was dozens of photos of him and her. "That's not his account. His account is--"

  "That's his other account, Jana. He's got several," Polly said, taking the phone back. "That's how cheaters do it. Multiple accounts, carefully blocking this account or that account and making sure no one sees them.”

  Her entire world turned upside down on her, and anger erupted. Jana glared at her. "And you just let me believe--"

  Polly held up a hand. "I seriously thought you knew. He always made it sound like you did. He'd say stuff like 'Jana's got her life. We hook up when we can,' and I didn't question it."

  Jana blinked, the words piercing her like a knife. "What made you?"

  "What made me what?"

  "What made you question it?" Jana asked.

  "Just, well, something he said offhandedly about multiple girlfriends.”

  Jana covered her face, tears in her eyes.

  "Everyone told me he wasn't the best. All my friends said it was strange how we'd go so long between seeing each other, but I kept defending him. I kept saying his work kept him busy, and he'd come when he could.”

  The pain ripped her to pieces. That she was so stupid.

  How did she not see this? How could she be so blind?

  "Jana, don't. I know it's hard."

  She pulled away. "No, you don't. Two years. For two years I've held onto this relationship because it was supposed to be real, that he was my person, and I find out now that I'm just a side piece?"

  Polly looked down and away. “I know, it’s—”

  Jana turned.

  “Is that her?”

  Walking up to them was the beautiful brunette in the photo. And damn, if she didn’t look even more beautiful in person. Like even the heat didn’t dare make her makeup run or her hair fall.

  Jana thought she would be sick. She didn’t understand. “This was, what, a set-up?” She put on hand on her hip. “Were you thinking you’d just confront me and run me off or something? Fight me?”

  The other woman came toward Jana. “Whatever it takes to get the point across.”

  “And what point is that?” Jana asked. So many emotions raged inside her she didn’t know what to do. Punching that perfect-faced female seemed like a good idea.

  “Jana, wait,” Polly said.

  “What, she can’t hurt me,” the other woman said.

  “Tori, don’t make this worse.” Polly stepped in between Jana and Stefan’s wife.

  “Worse? Like it’s my fault that the bastard has kept who knows how many side chicks around—”

  “Who says I’m the side chick,” Jana said. “Maybe it’s you!”

  Tori lunged forward at Jana. “You want the bastard? You can have him! I wasted three years on his ass! He isn’t worth it. I can’t do this shit anymore.”

  “You knew? Which one of us is more pathetic then? At least I didn’t know. You knew, and you put up with it!”

  “Stop it,” Polly said. “I called the two of you here to work this out. He’s a dick who doesn’t deserve either of you.” She held her hands up between the two of them to keep Jana away from Tori.

  “Jana, go over there,” Polly said, pointing toward the metal sculptured arches. “Give me just a minute,” she said and turned to Tori. “You, come here.”

  The two of them argued, but Jana couldn’t quite hear them.

  She didn’t want to.

  She was so mad. And hurt. And angry. And heartbroken.

  She tossed her latte in the trash and walked around the arches in the sculpture. Some were high. Some were low. The metal structures probably had some kind of message or meaning behind them, but whatever it was, Jana didn’t care.

  They were something tangible to walk through.

  Something real.

  More real than the awful relationship she’d been in.

  She slapped the metal as she passed between the arches. In the heat, they were hot to touch, the burn almost scalding. Like each blow was a reminder that this was real.

  That what she had wasn’t real.

  It wasn’t concrete.

  It wasn’t valid.

  Each slap of the metal, though, was valid.

  She imagined it was Stefan, slapping his face for every lie. For all the times he wouldn’t call her, and had avoided her when he claimed to be at work.

  “You lied to me,” she said, slapping the sturdy arch. The heat made her jump.

  “You told me we were special.”

  Slap.

  “That we meant something.”

  Slap.

  The arch zapped her with what had to be the worst static electricity ever, and she jerked her hand back.

  “We were supposed to be together.” She ripped the promise ring off her finger and threw it as hard as she could.

  It clinked against one arch.

  She sighed and a few tears released.

  She grabbed onto the arch that had shocked her before. The tingling sensation burned against her hand again, but this time, she didn’t pull away. The pain seemed to—

  Then everything went white.

  Jana tumbled forward and landed hard on a metal grating, hitting her knees, and just barely catching herself before she slammed face-first into the floor.

  “What in the world?” The light dimmed, and she shook her head.

  Voices were around her, but she couldn’t quite make out what was being said. It was another language, one she didn’t know.

  It didn’t sound like any language she’d ever heard.

  Her senses went on high alert. The first thing she realized was that the heat was gone. If anything, she was almost cold. The air smelled different.

  Like inside an office building or something.

  Manufactured, if that made sense. But it didn’t, because she was in the park.

  She rose unsteadily. Sure didn’t look like a park. It resembled an office building. Sort of. A metal grid beneath her, and wires running underneath that. Everything felt energized.

  As she was getting her bearings, a figure came over to her, and a pain stabbed her behind her ear.

  “Ouch!” Jana cried out. It lasted just a second, and then it was gone. She swung out, attempting to strike the attacker, but no one was there.

  “I’m sorry, that does sting a bit,” a soothing female voice said.

  Jana turned to the voice and jumped back. The woman could have been Wonder Woman. She had that dark hair and those eyes, but her skin was pink.

  And she had two little antennae.

  Jana ran her hand over her face. Surely she was dreaming.

  Nope, the pink-skinned woman was still there.

  “Where am I?”

  The woman held out her hand. “I’m Re-lee. You’re at the Intergalactic Dating Agency. Welcome.”

  “Re-lee, there’s two more coming through!”

  Re-lee turned away. “Already? Great. How fortunate!”

  When the bright light burst around her again, this time Jana covered her eyes. Two silhouettes took shape, and as they came into focus, she swore it was Polly and the other woman, Tori.

  Tori came through first. “What is this? Are we kidnapped?”

  Polly stepped forward. “Jana! You’re okay!”

  Jana blinked three times. What a crazy dream this was! She shook her head.

  “This is the Intergalactic Dating Agency,” Re-lee said.

  “Wait, what?” Tori asked. “What did she say?”

  “The Intergalactic Dating Agency,” Jana repeated.

  “You can understand her?” Polly asked.

  Jana nodded. About that time, another figure, a person who looked male, approached Polly and pressed a device behind her ear.

  “Ouch!”

  “It’s a communicator,” he said. “It helps you understand us.”

  He hit Tori with the same device.

  The brunette brought her fists up, ready to fight, but Jana touched her arm. “Shh, it’s okay.”

  “Whatever this is, it is not okay,” Tori said.

  Jana wasn’t in a place to disagree with her.

  5

  “They do not have anyone for us.” Olmed crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

  “You are so positive,” Erzo said, picking up his cup.

  “If they did, we would have met them by now,” Olmed replied.

  “They probably are getting treated and inoculated or whatever, like we did,” Erzo said with a shrug. He bobbed back and forth, sitting on his tail like it was a seat.

  “We should be meeting them,” Olmed said.

  “We will, when it’s time,” Phares replied, picking up his cup of ale. They’d been brought to a lounge to wait until it was time to meet their mates after they’d left the medical offices. They’d been killing time for a few standard hours, even having a meal, though none of them ate much.

  Each of them were nervous about the matchmaking. Olmed was the most obvious because his frustration was rising. Erzo tried to maintain peace about him, but that was just the way he was. Always the peacemaker. Yet his tail twitched a little more than normal.

  Phares, though, was slipping into Olmed’s way of thinking, that maybe this dating association could not find their matches, and he’d be back to hunting for someone to ease his Fever naturally.

  He forced himself to watch the galactic data reports that were projected down from the ceiling in holographic form.

  “She’s pretty,” Erzo said, gesturing to the new Terran Empire queen or whatever she was.

  “For royalty,” Phares added.

  “What’s wrong with royalty?” Erzo asked.

  Phares shrugged. “Doesn’t really have much to do with us, does it?”

  Olmed nodded. “Your thoughts make sense.”

  “Can’t hold someone’s birthright against them,” Erzo said.

  Phares’s parental came to mind. “No, I suppose not.”

  He turned his attention back to the holograms. He didn’t really care about the Terran Empire’s new Empress or the cyborgs who had finally made peace with the Terrans. Nor did he care about other galactic issues.

  It was noise to distract him.

  “What is that?” Olmed said, gesturing to a display on the opposite wall.

  Phares turned.

  His eyes got wide. “Is that one of our mines?”

  Though he knew it was. He’d studied every crater and chunk of every one of those rocks floating in that asteroid field. He knew them all.

  “That’s Aster 5,” he said, before he could stop himself. Where a lot of the instabilities had been lately, and unfortunately, also where a lot of the mining was going on, because it had a great deal of usable ores in the core.

  “What? You named them?” Olmed asked.

  “Doesn’t matter that he did,” Erzo said. “We can make fun of him about it later.”

  Phares waved his hand and stared at the hologram, a horrible knot building in his gut.

  Far worse than his Fever issues.

  The asteroid broke into chunks, an explosion lighting up space until the air burned out.

  All three of them stood.

  “What is the time stamp?” Olmed said.

  “It was a few hours ago,” Erzo replied. “There in the corner.”

  Debris flew everywhere. It bombarded the nearby generational ship that housed the miners, and even on the footage, the damage to the ship was immediately obvious.

  Air leaked from the damaged section of the ship, and the ship shuddered.

  “We have to go,” Phares said. “We have to get back there—”

  On the screen appeared a miner.

  Not just any miner.

  Shoval.

  “Yeah, we got hit hard, but I managed to secure the ship. Good thing I was there. No one else could have done it.”

  Phares walked away. “Of course,” he muttered. “He is the big hero and saves all the miners and the ship. Of course, he is.”

  Phares slammed the chair, sending it flying across the bar.

  Erzo appeared next to him. “Peace, my friend. At least they’re okay.”

  “Get sucked out an airlock,” he muttered and walked away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not here.” Phares headed out of the bar. His mind flew in a thousand light years a second.

  He was furious, partly because his parental was the big hero, but the other part of him fumed over the asteroids.

  Aster 5, gone.

  From the way the debris scattered, they might never collect what was lost.

  And who was in the mines when it happened? How many miners died?

  He’d been gone a day.

  A single day, and an asteroid exploded, almost destroying their home base ship. How in the stars had they broken an asteroid?

  It was a piece of a planet. Not exactly a tiny, delicate thing.

  Yet it exploded right after he left.

  He shook his head.

  Fwan would rip into him over this.

  He was surprised his communicator hadn’t gone off yet from Fwan demanding his return. He pulled the device from his pants pocket and checked it. No messages.

  While it had been Fwan’s idea for his miners to come here, that less than a day after the three of them left, an asteroid exploded…

  How messed up was that?

  Phares’s head throbbed, and he headed down the corridor, past other food and entertainment locations.

  If he remembered the layout of Disguised Serenity, transports docked close. Maybe a level up or down, near to the outermost wall, so the commercial transports were nearby.

  It was also why there was so much traffic in the corridor. People both disembarking and boarding the transports. Here, the hallway resembled an old luxury cruiser’s passageway between cabins, the stores in what had been quarters before. Plenty of other humanoids jostled past each other in their determination to get to wherever they were going.

  Well, except him.

  No one got too close to a Xianan.

  At least here, he was just another Xianan, and their species' reputation preceded him, so most people left him alone.

 

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