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But the moment he’d been introduced to Mia, that idea had flown out the fucking window. He’d wanted her at once…and understood within the first hour of their meeting that he would never be able to have her. At first because she was married, but even now that she was getting divorced, he knew she was out of reach.
There was a wall around Mia he couldn’t breach—no one could, as far as Sev could see. She was closed off—sealed up tight emotionally and she didn’t seem to have any interest in letting anyone in—not even him.
So a mate was off the table for him. He had to be content—well,mostlycontent—to just be near the woman he wanted, even if he could only have her as a partner and never as a lover or wife.
Mia also shook her head.
“Divorced,” she said succinctly.
“I see.” Sylvan nodded gravely. “My condolences. I will never understand how you humans are able to end a relationship in that way, but I know it isn’t easy.”
“You don’t know my ex,” Mia said dryly. “If you met him, you’d understand.”
Sev had to agree with her there. He still remembered the first time he’d been introduced to Mia’s ex-mate. It was about a year after he had first become her partner and she had invited him to her house to eat Last Meal.
Mia’s ex mate, Michael, was tall by human standards—though of course not nearly as tall as Sev. But it was clear that he’d thought his height and his sex made him superior to Mia. He kept making jokes at her expense and calling her “the little woman” and winking at Sev as he did so, as though the two of them were in a private club, just because they were both male.
He also liked to swat Mia on her plump behind and order her around in a way that was only half playful. “Woman, go make me a drink!” he demanded.
Then he asked if she was burning the meal they were about to cook and laughed and told Sev that Mia was “hopeless” in the kitchen.
“But she’s learning—she keeps trying—I’ll give her that. You know women—it takes them a while,” he’d added with another annoyingly superior laugh.
“A while to what?” Sev had demanded. “Are you saying that Mia is less competent at food prep or less intelligent in some way because she’s a female?”
“Oh, uh…” Michael had looked taken aback. “You know what I mean—you might be an alien but you’re still a guy, right?”
“Being a male doesn’t mean I think females are stupid or incompetent,” Sev had growled, for which Mia’s mate—now her ex-mate—had no answer.
By the end of the evening, Sev had been holding himself back—he hadreallywanted to pound the shit out of the other male.
“Why do you let him talk about you like that?” he’d demanded later, when he and Mia were alone. He’d told himself that he shouldn’t say anything—Mia was an intensely private person and she might never let him get any closer if he wasn’t respectful of her boundaries. But after the Last Meal he’d endured with her mate, he simply wasn’t able to hold himself back.
He’d expected Mia to shut down—to refuse to answer the question. Instead, she surprised him by shaking her head.
“I don’t know,” she’d admitted, a look of misery on her face. “He promised he’d change after we left the…after we left. But he hasn’t—at this point, I don’t think he’s capable.”
“After you left what?” Sev had asked. But she’d only shaken her head.
“Mia, you deserve better than that asshole,” Sev had told her.
“I know,” she said simply. And then she had turned the conversation to other topics. But the next day she’d started divorce proceedings. So maybe what Sev had said to her had an effect after all…
“Have you heard of them?” Commander Sylvan’s question cut off Sev’s train of thought and he realized he’d missed something.
“I’m sorry—heard of who?” he asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.
“Of the PPP—the Peaceful People of the Prophet—that’s what they call themselves,” Sylvan clarified. “They have ads all over the Outernet.”
“Sorry, no,” Mia said and Sev shook his head.
“We only have access to the Internet down on Earth,” he told Commander Sylvan. “And it only covers the one planet.”
“Wait—so what does this ‘Outernet’ cover?” Mia asked, frowning.
“It’s a bit like your Internet,” Sylvan told her. “But it connects most of the planets with sentient beings in the rest of the galaxy. Anyway, The Peaceful People of the Prophet do a lot of ads and post them on the Outernet. Here—watch.”
He pointed to the viewscreen mounted on the wall of his office and it flickered to life.
