Blind Date Corporation

Litha is stuck with a patron who likes to tell her about his dates with other women, and she is stuck with endless picnics and horseback rides. They aren't even fast enough to be interesting. Quitting used to be beyond her imagination, but now, it is all she thinks about. After her last disappointing date, she puts in her immediate resignation and settles in to think about her future. Working surrounded by happy couples for the rest of her existence isn't something she is willing to do, so working from home will have to be her thing.A call from another government sets her on a mission to absorb some radiation as it is what she is best at. Standing in a field and pulling in power from a decade-old bomb suits her mood. The Uraddans had been insensitive, or perhaps they had enjoyed the thought of contamination, but when she cleared the site, she headed home, only to be called back to open the old casing in the middle of the space.She didn't expect it to be difficult, but she didn't expect it to be occupied with the loveliest man she had ever met. He clings to her like she is the last safe place on earth, and when she stares into his starry eyes, she feels that she just might be.

Nelith has been trying to atone for what the Uraddan government made her do to the citizens of other countries and her own. Her skills in slicing through anything for as long as she wanted the molecular blade to go made her well-known, feared, and despised in equal measure. When she had been extracted from Uradda, years of work and therapy made her independent and got her into a useful position at Z Tech.She had tried to socialize herself, but the BDC rejected her when she took offense to a simulation and sliced the machine into several pieces. All subsequent applicants were tested in a different manner.Called to meet with foreign representatives, Nelith looks at their outrage and is surprised when the head of the lab brings up the compilation file of how Nelith was trained.Dmitri watches the video of the making of the Blade of Uradda, and he can't reconcile the woman in front of him with the creature on the vids. She survived, and when she meets his gaze, the beasts that occupy him send searing recognition that she was his mate. They just had to convince him.