Skye sat on her living room couch reading and rereading the information on the Narovian Matchmaking site. She thought about the mother and the two little girls and the father they might have. What did Skye have?
She had a house with twenty-five years left to pay on a thirty-year mortgage. With the bookstore gone, bills for the inventory would soon be due, and she had no more inventory.
Skye had put her heart and soul into making her bookstore and internet café a success, then it was gone. She had enough savings to cover expenses for a couple months. Then maybe a couple more months until foreclosure and eviction. All she needed was to find a job.
She was sure she could find a job with her experience. At the moment, what she wanted was a strong man with a hard body to wrap her in his arms and make her feel like it would all be all right. It wasn’t that she couldn’t take care of herself. She’d been doing it for the last ten years since she got out of high school.
Skye knew she could keep doing it, but what if this matchmaking service could really find her soulmate? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to love who could love her back? …A lover who could drive her mad with desire for him… who would father her children and raise them with her?
How was that ever going to happen if she didn’t do something to make it happen? It had been a couple years since her last date, a blind date disaster. She hardly ever had time to go out and meet people. Most of the people she met came to her store but not that many datable men.
Skye spent a lot of time behind the scenes buying supplies keeping the books and paying bills. Janie was more likely to meet someone to date than Skye was. The expense of the application was not going to make that much difference in the big picture of her current losses. Why not take a chance? The odds were better than buying a lottery ticket.
She scrolled through the application on her phone. It was pretty detailed, so she decided to fill it out on her laptop which she had left on the coffee table. Some of the questioned were very detailed. Others were general. Would she consider males of other humanoid species then gave pictures of males and females of those species? It also asked it she would consider enhanced humanoids such as cyborgs.
All of the species that were shown were human-like with slight variations and guaranteed to be genetically compatible. Skye looked at the descriptions of the cyborgs who were of the various humanoid species listed, and they looked human, so she checked yes for them as well.
The big question was would she be willing to travel to another world to live with a mate they chose for her. Skye sat and thought about it for several minutes. Could she actually do that? What if she went and she hated it? How would she get back to Earth?
She checked, and it said she could buy passage or in some cases the mate would guarantee return passage. However, the matchmaking service guaranteed ninety-nine percent compatibility. There were also questions on whether she preferred to live in a city or small town and if she would consider a colonial settlement with at least the same technological level as her homeworld.
Currently, most of the other humanoid species on the list did not reside on Earth.
Skye thought about the hundreds of times she used to lay on the lawn by her house in the country and look up at the stars and wonder. Now she knew with certainty there were many more civilizations out there. It could be the adventure of a lifetime or a nightmare.
Today was a nightmare. She had been barely ten feet from obliteration. Wasn’t it worth a chance to see what was out there?
Okay, yes, she would consider mate on another world. After years of urban living, she would even be willing to go back to her roots in the hills of West Virginia to rural living on a colonial world. Or maybe they would actually find her someone on Earth. Would it really matter where or who, if he was the right man? It wouldn’t matter when she really thought about it.
The only positive then she’d gotten from the whole day was that she realized what she really wanted in life. She wanted something she had never had---a real family. To have that, she needed a mate because she wanted her children to have a mother and a father who loved them and each other.
Skye finished answering all the questions including the psych evaluations and made her greeting video after combing her short brown hair and refreshing her eye make up to erase all evidence of her tears from before.
It took a good two hours to finish the questionnaire and her video.
“Today, aliens attacked Earth and destroyed a big chunk of my city as I was on my way to work. Had I been closer, I would have been killed. It made me realize that I want more out of my life than just a successful career. I want to marry and have a family and make them my priority. I want a mate who I can love who will love me back. Thanks for listening.”
She reviewed it once, not knowing what else to say, then pressed send. Her DNA kit came by express delivery the next day. It surprised her after the chaos in the wake of the alien attack.
The Alliance website reported that the Drayid ships were destroyed and Enforcers would remain in the Solar System to protect Earth from further attacks. Television news was sketchy about the attack, reporting that the cause of the big square craters cut from cities around the world was unknown. Hundreds of thousands of people were missing in and around every city.
Three days later, they announced the Earth would enter into a treaty agreement with the United Galactic Alliance of Worlds. As far as Skye could see, Earth had no choice. Earth didn’t have the technology to defend against aliens like the Drayids. They needed allies that did, and the Alliance was the only confederation offering.
Skye tried to look for a job during those days after the attack. She applied mostly online and sent out resumes online. She called employment services but some didn’t answer, and some told her to give it a couple weeks. Even job listings in the newspapers were sparse.
After that, Skye didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She was used to having all the work of owning and managing her store. She often worked there seven days a week because it was opened seven days a week. She could do all the jobs from making the coffee to fixing glitches with the Wi-Fi, and order stock.
She barely had time to read the books that she sold. She had quit bringing them home and even took some back in favor of a reading tablet. There were dozens of books on the tablet, and they only took up a small space.
With eminent financial disaster hanging over her head, she found it hard to relax. She had a nagging feeling that she should be doing something more as days went by. She made phone calls and checked her emails every day in hopes someone would offer a job.
After the calls and searches, she cleaned her house and then went to the park and walked for a couple hours to de-stress and burn off her nervous energy.
Finally, she decided she’d put her house up for sale. It was in a good neighborhood and worth more than she paid for it. Hopefully, it was far enough from the alien pit that someone would buy it.
Her new routine went on for four weeks. She only got calls on jobs that paid less than half of what she was making from her store. Then three things happened at once.
Skye got an offer for a job, an offer for her house, and a match notification from the matchmaking service. The job was in Pittsburgh, and the house offer would pay off the mortgage and return most of her equity. She took the offer for her house because it would preserve her savings and pay her losses from the loss of her store.
Skye decided to look at the match from the matchmaking service before she decided about the job. His name was Rader Knight, and he was a cyborg law officer on a world called Glasica (Glă see’ kă) a young Alliance colony.
Skye could only stare at his still picture. He was superbly attractive though a bit intimidating. Were he to smile, he would be downright gorgeous with his dark hair and intense blue eyes. He looked like a man she would like to know better.