Page 6 of Delivered to My Alpha Alien Lovers

We had gone to local bars and clubs and had no luck. Mostly the atmosphere told us we were unlikely to meet our mate at a place like that. Unless she was here doing the same thing we were, looking for a fated mate, she wouldn’t want to be in the kinds of dives we found ourselves in.

We’d joined a book club, a bowling league, and anything else social this world had to offer, but nobody we encountered was the right person, and we’d given up.

Farsel’s condition had made it imperative that we find her now. I’d hoped he did not share his family’s weakness, but he did, and I didn’t have any ideas on how to look for her. Frustration had me stomping around the kitchen, and when I slapped my hand on the counter, his phone, which lay there, lit up.

Lucky I didn’t smash it with my violence, but it just seemed like everything was going wrong with us getting stranded here for who knew how long and now his symptoms. Worrying about our people coming for us was probably foolish. If my memories of how it worked when someone got the mating sickness were correct, we only had weeks at best to find our mate before the damage to my friend became irreparable.

He could even die.

His phone home page was cluttered with apps, and I scanned them, grinning in spite of myself at his multiple weather and traffic icons as well as some related to his passion for gaming and one…what was that?

I picked up the phone and swiped it to open, hoping he hadn’t put a password on it. He had. I tried to think of what he might have used. Birthday? No, that wouldn’t make sense in our home planet’s system. A special holiday? Then I thought I had it. I typed in the date of our arrival, month and year. Bingo.

I didn’t get too far into it, just opened the app and glanced to see what it was. No need to violate his privacy by doing more. Nope. Well not too much more. He’d sent a message to a female, short, one line, but it expressed the desperate straits in which we found ourselves. But it seemed Mail-Order Matings was an app for shifters and other paranormal beings, even humans if they managed to find it and were looking for someone out of the ordinary.

How cool.

I closed the app and left Farsel’s phone where I’d found it and went to find mine. I hadn’t seen any response from the female, but a glance at her bio and I knew I had to try as well. How long could it take?

Long. It took a long time to fill out the bio with all its questions. Who did I want to date? Who was a definite no? Vampires. I wasn’t sure what alien blood would do to them, but I didn’t want to find out. And orcs. But other than that, I was willing to accept any mate they chose to send us.

As I entered all the information, I tried not to let the anxiety get to me any more than it already had. What if our mate was back home all this time? Seemed likely that would be the case, but if there was even the slightest chance that she was here, I had to try.

Chapter Seven

Amaris

My eyes had been opened to a world of knowledge with this app. There were shark shifters, for one. Shark. Shifters.

Even the thought of spending an amount of time underwater with a shark mate, well, it didn’t sit right with me. I’d never felt pulled to learn scuba diving—largely because of fears of being eaten by sharks. His words were pretty though. He should find someone who liked his poetry and smooth moves, but that girl wasn’t me.

I chatted through the app with some of them, but they didn’t click. Not that I expected a click necessarily, but there had to be some kind of connection, even through something like typing on the phone.

There had to be.

I gave up my search, or being searched for, for a few hours and cleaned my house and cooked up some chili and left it to stew in the slow cooker. Cheddar jalapeno cornbread would go in right before I was about to eat. There was nothing like steamy cornbread fresh out of the oven.

Once my laundry was done and I’d put away the last of my clothes, I went back to the phone. Finding a mate and searching through the app had become somewhat of an obsession.

It was more than lust or wanting someone in my life. My soul craved love. Real love. Giving and receiving it.

Of all the people I’d spoken to and whose profiles I’d viewed, one that stood out among the rest and silly me had blocked them based off one word:Urgent.

I didn’t consider their perspective or a scenario in which that word could mean anything other than a red flag.

I clicked onto my settings, hunting for the blocked profile, but found nothing. A sinking feeling took over my chest. What if that person was my mate, and I’d simply misinterpreted the meaning in the subject line and made a judgment that would change the course of my life.

After a chat online with one of the customer service people for the app, they informed me that blocked profiles could not be accessed for the safety of the user.

Damn it! He had been hot and interesting and nice. I’d gotten myself so caught up in one word and picture that I’d even missed his name somehow. And he had a friend as well. Two tall, handsome, powerful shifters, and I’d blocked them over a trigger that had more to do with me than with them.

And now, they were gone.

Because here I was, urgently seeking them out when they had been doing the same thing. They had only been bolder about the approach than I had.

That night, I ate and chatted with the Mail-Order Matings customer service about the blocked profile, but they answered swiftly saying that the profile would remain out of reach for both users once someone blocked them.

In my frustration and stubbornness, I scrolled through the app with new fervor, hoping that the customer service person and facts would be wrong and sway in my favor.

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