Page 5 of Delivered to My Alpha Alien Lovers (Mail-Order Matings #20)

Amaris

I left my phone on the charger in the kitchen when I went to bed. I’d started doing that when I caught myself surfing late into the night altogether too often. As was my habit, I waited until I poured my first cup of coffee to sit down at the counter and check messages. I never gave the app I’d signed up for a thought until I saw the icon on my screen. Oh. Right.

What had I been thinking? Why would a shifter want me? Oh, I knew I wasn’t horrible to look at, and I prided myself on my mind, but they were so different from humans. At least the few I knew were. They gave themselves to life and love with a wholeheartedness I’d never found in any of the men I dated.

Rex would lay down his life for Jenny and the kids; he would always make his mate and his family his priority. I hadn’t seen a lot of that among my non-shifter friends with their other halves. Not that some regular guys weren’t great, but there was a passion there I wanted with all my soul.

But would anyone like Rex want me? An ordinary human with an eye for the cosmos?

Swiping the screen, I opened the app, but before I could try to navigate anywhere, notifications flared to life. Dozens of them. What on earth? They must have made a mistake, sent someone else’s messages to me.

But I couldn’t resist peeking at one, so I scanned the subject lines. Wolves and other shifters, an orc, a wizard, other things I didn’t even know existed. And one whose subject line said only, Urgent . That should have been every kind of red flag. My finger strayed back to a wolf shifter. Weren’t they what I’d had in mind? A guy like Rex. Hot, kind, protective, generally awesome? My friend’s mate even did the vacuuming without wanting gratitude and a trophy like some of my mundane friends’ husbands seemed to.

But why would someone put down urgent? I clicked on his bio and read through. He and another guy were looking to meet their mate ASAP. He used the terms the shifters did like mate, but maybe that was something required here on the app?

Not a word about what they were. And his friend didn’t seem to have a bio himself. If it was such a rush… Why would it be such a rush?

I went to the others again, reading through one after the next and considering what it might be like to be “mated” to them. Others had come in while I was wasting my time with the whatever he was who wanted a mate for himself and his buddy.

More shifters, mostly. But one vampire. For real?

I spent a good fifteen minutes reading his bio, which detailed his life in the past few centuries with an impressive compactness considering what he had to share. I tried to imagine what it might be like to spend time with someone who was only awake at night. Would he like to go out to movies or maybe lake swimming in the moonlight? Or did he just like to sit around and be elegant like in the movies. Would he expect his mate to be a food source? He didn’t say, but my imagination went wild with the horrible possibilities.

I shivered and closed the page.

A couple of hours later, I’d reviewed so many more bios. Those who had hit me up and some suggestions from the app itself. If I liked any of those, I’d have to approach them first, and while a few were kind of interesting, I didn’t think I’d feel comfortable doing that. Oh, I’d asked men out on dates, so that wasn’t an issue, but it was such a strange new world, dating outside the ordinary human realm, and I didn’t even know what to say.

I moved on to some wolves, my original interest, and they seemed nice. Cute, for sure, but none of them were making me want to reply. At least, not yet. But it didn’t stop me from reading more. I finished the whole pot of coffee and curled up on the couch with my phone, lost in a world I’d only seen the slightest glimpse of before. All of these people who spent their time on this planet, going about their lives just like the ordinary humans and with so little notice.

After every bio, I found myself wandering back to the “urgent” guy. So much of what he said about himself was interesting and he sounded pretty nice. And he was hot. But…there was that big red flag.

Finally, I deleted him and blocked, or tried to anyway. I wasn’t sure if it worked. But that should be no trouble because my address and phone were not available without my sharing it. And then I went out to buy some groceries. My phone burned in my pocket, but I managed to control myself until I bought my chicken and veggies, cereal and milk, and a few other items. I’d never had trouble getting dates, if I wanted them, but I wasn’t Miss Popularity either. What was different here?