Page 3 of Mated By Twilight

He felt his brother’s agreement as he continued looking through their messages. There were more than a few fans already sending their congratulations on another show well done. He read them off his holodisplay as he worked to get his hair back in order. That last fight scene had been quite acrobatic, and his silvery white hair suffered for it.

Tillos finished fixing himself and stood to come help Sollit. He let his brother touch up his makeup as he focused only on reading. There was no way to get through all of them in the short time they had, of course, but he at least wanted to hit the important ones.

“Ah, our biggest fan sent us another one,” Sollit grinned sardonically. “Want to hear it?”

“Pass,” Tillos said, his face unmoving but his heart grimacing, making Sollit laugh. “We don’t have time to read a novel. We’ll tell her we saw it but wanted to save reading it for later.”

“So, we can savor every precious word,” Sollit finished grandly, laughing when he felt his brother’s disdain. “Well, she doesn’t need to know that’s not the truth. Be nice. She got us succar beetles.”

“She’s obsessed.”

“She’s nice.”

“You’re naïve.”

Sollit laughed again. As charming and warm as he appeared to others, Tillos was cool and icy. Their fans loved the difference, saying it really separated them as twins. For those that weren’t avanava, it made it easier to appreciate them when they let themselves be different. It also worked great from a marketing standpoint. The hot and cold twins were a great seller. Of course, thatwastheir real personality, they just amplified it for the sake of performance.

They also weren’t really disagreeing right now. Sollit was mostly just jesting. Their number one fan, Biella, was a bit too invested in them. They weren’t really going to tell her that they were going to savor every word of her letter. They weren’t trying to encourage her. But her devotion got them treats like succar beetles, so it wasn’t all that bad.

“You’re done,” Tillos finally said, stepping away. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” Sollit almost closed the holodisplay being projected off his combot, but the name on the next message down brought him up short.

True Match.

Tillos froze, turning back as he felt Sollit’s heart skip a beat. “What is it?”

Instead of answering, Sollit pressed the message. He hadn’t heard a thing from them since he and Tillos submitted their scans into the matching system – individually, as they were assured the scan needed both of them separately even if their souls were one. The company would have no reason to contact them unless-

Sollit let out a wordless cry of joy. Tillos was by his side in an instant, reading the same thing he was-

‘Congratulations, you have been matched!’

Tillos gasped, his jaw dropping. Sollit laughed, throwing his arms around his shoulders, shaking him. Tillos was stunned, and he was overjoyed.

“They did it!” He yelled, hollering his excitement. “Tillos, we got a match!”

“That’s… it hasn’t even been that long…”

“And we got matched!” Sollit threw back his head, laughing. Pure joy driving the sound forcefully from his throat.

A mate! At last! Sollit and Tillos spent all their time traveling and performing. Searching for a mate was something they couldn’t do easily. He sometimes wished that, like other species, they found their mate by sight or smell, for surely that would make it easier. But no. Avanava males only found their mates when they fucked her for the first time and the bond formed. It meant that finding their mate was a hard search for the perfect female.

Yet, how could they do that when they weren’t on their own planet, rarely met the same females twice, and were always busy?

True Match, the mating agency that only needed about half a mark to scan them both, could do it easily. So, when they’d been near Holotulle last, they’d gotten it done. However, some part of Sollit didn’t think they’d actually succeed. It definitely seemed, at first glance, like the kind of scam that popped up to sucker people out of their hard earned credz. Still, it hadn’t beenthatexpensive to get the scan, and those that had been matched swore by it.

And now they found her! Their mate!

“We need to get back to Yeluka Akuley,” he said quickly, heart racing, as he ran his hand over his recently fixed hair, mussing it up again. But in his excitement, he didn’t care. “W-We can swing by, pick her up, and bring her with us! You know we always need more stagehands and tech crew. Oh! And we can introduce her to our mother and fathers while we’re there before we leave again. And we’ll have to pick up all those things females need. Like, er, oils, and hair treatments, and, er… Tillos, help me think of things females need! All our scale polish is male scented. We need female scents. We need new sheets for the bed. We need-”

“Sollit,” his brother cut him off, still reading the message. “She’s not avanava.”

“What?” Still stunned by the news, Sollit didn’t immediately hear what he said.

“Our mate. She’s not avanava,” Tillos repeated, pointing to the message, his own excitement flattened slightly with concern.

There it was, written clearly in the air.

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