Cora Brighton walked under the glass dome of the greenhouse she managed with her holographic tablet in hand. She checked the rows of ripe red tomatoes growing happily in the hydroponic substrate and checked off the list on her tablet. Cora approached the end of the line and added the last of her checks to her data spreadsheet.

The greenhouse was in excellent running order and all was ready for the tomato harvest. Cora stepped to the control terminal at the end of the row and uploaded her data, then she activated the mechanical harvester with her tablet. The robotic arm started at one end of the row, snipping the fruits, one by one, and placing them into shipping boxes.

She watched as the robot harvested each row of tomatoes, and placed the full boxes on a conveyor belt that took them to the shipping room. With a smile, Cora completed her work for the day and got ready to go home for the long holiday weekend.

Christmas was only a few days away, but everything was so different from how it had been when she was a child. Cora was old enough to remember a time before the Draconians: the dragon shifter aliens who’d come to earth thirty years ago.

The Draconians had come to Earth looking for brides because they had a genetic abnormality that favored male offspring. The dragon shifters needed to mate with women of other races every five thousand years or they would become extinct.

She had only been a kid before they’d come to Earth, and it had been a totally different world. She remembered playing in her mother's garden as a child, picking sweet ripe tomatoes in the summer sunshine. The taste of the fruit never left her memory and neither did the feeling of her mother's embrace.

Cora left the greenhouse and approached the hover bus stop that would take her back to her apartment in the Missouri bio-dome. As she waited, she felt a tinge of regret in her heart that she’d been feeling more and more lately.

She disembarked from her bus and walked up the deck to the entrance of her domed building. She strode inside, past the sunlight streaming through the glass windows. She walked down the narrow hallway to her private rooms and placed her hand on the identity scanner. After the scanner read her prints, the door beeped and slid open. She walked into her well-appointed modern apartment and kicked off the waterproof shoes she wore in the greenhouses, slid out of her utility coat, and stepped into her soft slippers.

It was good to be home after a long day of work. Cora walked into her kitchen. In most ways, it was the same as the kitchens she remembered from before the days of the Draconians; when technology had been more primitive. She did have a replicator, but being of an older generation, Cora still enjoyed cooking her own food just like she enjoyed growing fresh veggies.

She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay, and poured herself a glass. With her wine in hand, she moved to her favorite spot in front of the windows that looked out over the bio-dome.

This time of year, when it was cold in Missouri and the corn fields were fallow, most of the fresh food for the region was grown in the bio-dome greenhouses. Outside, sun glinted off the vast domes and long rows of glass-covered gardens.

Cora sighed, unable to stop feeling sad. As much as she loved her job as an agricultural analyst, she couldn't help but think that she had frittered away her life and had nothing to show for it. She took another sip of wine and gave her apartment holocom the verbal command to turn on her television screen.

As she sat down on her comfy couch, a DNBA game came on TV. Cora wasn’t a huge sports fan, but she couldn’t help but be engrossed, watching the super-hot Draconian NBA players.

As the sun began to set over the bio-dome, Cora’s thoughts turned dark. Most human men nowadays were completely caught up in the distractions of reconstructing Earth and didn’t want to settle down and have a family. Cora had been focused on helping feed the world since the Mulgor, the Draconian’s ancient enemy, had attacked twenty-five years ago. But for the first time in all those years, she was beginning to feel like she needed more.

As she was tilting back her glass for another long swig, a commercial for the Draconian Mating Lottery came on the screen.

“Join the Mating Lottery and see the stars.”

As much as Cora loved her life, she knew something had to change. She couldn't go on this way, day after day. Even if she had the chance to watch green things growing, and knowing that she was feeding her entire region on a daily basis, it just wasn't enough for her anymore.

She was lonely and growing lonelier by the day. Her parents’ death last Christmas had left a serious hole in her heart and now she would be facing her first holiday alone. She just didn't know if she could do it.

She gulped down the rest of her wine and set the glass on the coffee table. Cora tapped her holocom bracelet and brought up the holographic search bar. A few seconds later, the Draconian mating lottery website came up on her holo-screen. Steeling her nerves, she began to fill out the questionnaire. On the last page, she was asked to provide a sample of her DNA to match her with a dragon shifter.

It was her last chance to back out. But instead of clicking away from the web page, Cora put the tip of her finger on her holocom bracelet’s identity reader. A pinprick took a sample of her blood and a processing bar came up on the screen.

With the advanced cloud technology of the Draconians, the DNA sample was processed almost instantaneously and the results were revealed.

"Congratulations you have been matched with the Earth Prince of Galaton, Magmus Murcul.”

Galaton? She had heard a few whispers about this new planet being invited into the mating lottery, but she didn't know anything about the place or their culture. She clicked on the link and opened the profile of her match.

His face came up on the screen. If Cora had been holding her wine glass, she probably would have dropped it on the floor. The man was gorgeous. Hotter than any other Draconian she'd ever seen, and she'd been around them for most of her life.

Most dragon shifters were seven feet tall, immensely masculine, and extraordinarily handsome, but this guy put the rest of them to shame. He had bright green skin and deep brown eyes, and full lips that begged to be kissed. He was obviously a tree of a man, standing tall amongst the groves on his home planet.

Cora did an Internet search for more information about Galaton, and soon learned that it was a distant planet in the Draconian galaxy. It had been settled millions of years ago as a Draconian colony. Now, it was independent of Draconia and ruled over by four princes.

Each prince represented an element: fire, air, earth, and water. Magmus was the Earth Prince. That meant he lived in lands dedicated to the element of Earth: forests, caves, gardens, and all the other things that incorporated the Earth element.

Could it be true that her match was a man this godly, from a place so rich and full of beauty?

As much as the idea of going to a strange planet out in the distant universe scared her, she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to live in a place that was created just for her prince’s element.

Almost immediately she received a text on her holocom.

“You have been matched! Please report to your nearest Draconian Consulate at your earliest convenience.”

This was all happening so fast. Cora didn’t want to spend Christmas alone, but the idea of going to Galaton was terrifying. She definitely wouldn’t make it in time for the holidays. Maybe signing up for the lottery had been a mistake. Would the dragon prince even want a woman as old as her? And what if she didn’t like him? Could she ever come home?

When the dragons had first arrived on Earth, human women were required to spend at least two weeks with their mates no matter what. The dragon shifters had a mating impulse that they called a thrall. If the dragon didn’t claim his mate, the thrall would slowly drive him mad.

Human brides never chose not to stay with their mates, as far as she knew. But who knew what could happen on a planet so many light years away from home?

Cora got up and went to the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine.

She walked to the windows, overlooking the greenhouses with her wine in hand and tried to decide what she was going to do. Could she deny her match to her fated mate, almost certainly causing his madness and death? Or could she go to this new world she didn’t understand and mate with a dragon she’d never met?