Mated by Twilight (True Match)

Chapter 1

Sollit

“How could you?!” Sollit roared, voice breaking as tears pooled in his eyes. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. “You betrayed me!”

Across from him, his twin, stiff and expressionless, lifted his own sword. He faced him with unnerving calm.

“This is a cruel world,” he said evenly. “To pit me against you. But my heart, my soul, it calls to my female. Not even you, my brother, can interfere.”

“I will not let you.” Sollit raised his blade, aiming the point at his brother’s throat, jaw tightening as he held his head high. “She is mine! And I will fight for her! A disloyal traitor like you would never be able to take care of her!”

“Please! Stop this!” Further back, separate from them, Skara was on her knees, pleading desperately for their conflict to end. But, of course, it could not. Her brilliant, bright green scales sparkled, as her lovely, gossamer white gown spread around her. She was slender, strong, and beautiful, and the source of their conflict.

“You think you’re any better than me?” Sollit’s brother, Tillos, demanded to know, glaring at him so darkly, so hatefully. “You’re the one who abandoned her! If it weren’t for me, there would have been no one for you to come back to.” He held his head high. “You cannot claim to care when you would leave her so readily.”

Sollit let out a wordless scream of rage, charging him down for the insult. Their swords clashed with an impressive display of sparks.

The audience gasped and cheered as their muscles strained, pushing against each other, and the lights shifted, highlighting the lines of their faces, their muscles, their costumes. Throwing them and their bitter conflict into sharp relief.

A tale of two brothers, split apart by a female.

Sollit rather thought it was ridiculous. If they would have just shared the female who loved them both, their tragedy wouldn’t have been immortalized in the rootavin culture it came from. Were this a story from the avanava species, Sollit and Tillos’ species, it would have had a very different, much more satisfying ending.

But their species wasn’t relevant to the story being told. None of them performing were even rootavin – Skara was a ratchi, and the other various roles were played by different species. But the story, The Gilded and Tarnished Love, was a tragedy, and they were actors filling their role.

This, the dramatic climax, saw Sollit and Tillos’ characters finally come to blows after years of pining after the same female. She had loved Sollit in her youth, but when the death of his parents drove him to war, Tillos stepped in during his absence and took her heart away. Now, her punishment for loving them was to watch them battle to the death over her.

Sollit would win, but the victory was a hollow one. Unbeknownst to him, Tillos had dipped his blade in poison, and he would subsequently die from his wounds. Skara’s character would then be left all alone, with nothing but the bodies of the two males she had loved and the duty that had bound her to pick between them in the first place.

As Sollit said, foolish. But it was Corvidair’s turn to pick the play they put on and, as a rootavin, the story was a famous, and popular, one he’d grown up knowing. Nothing Sollit suggested about changing the ending could convince him to do so. There was nothing for it. Though the leading males were avanava, a species known for two males, two brothers, mating a single female, the story called for them to be at each other’s throat.

Sollit was going to make them perform a classic, happy , avanava love story when it was his turn to pick to make up for this.

For now, he and Tillos went through their dramatic, choreographed sword fight while Skara, helpless and despairing, cried for them. She dared not interfere, however. She knew that, no matter who won, she would lose.

That was really why Sollit questioned these two brothers that claimed to love her. Why, if that was true, did they cause her such pain? If they couldn’t share her, then at least they could resist killing each other and hurting her. But he supposed that was a result of the story coming from the rootavin culture. They were not monogamous either, but their mating practices were fully reversed. Where avanava were two brothers sharing a female, the rootavin mated one male to a group of females. They absolutely did not share between males.

To understand his character, Sollit had to imagine that Tillos wasn’t his brother at all. It was natural and normal for males of his species to share their mate with their twin, but they did not share her with other males. If anything, sharing her between them just made them more possessive. They would work together to keep other males away from her.

So, to channel the right energy for the play, Sollit imagined that Tillos was an unfamiliar male daring to take his female from him. And that was enough to give him the rage to fight as a male driven furiously mad with jealousy.

The result was a glorious display of their physical skills and the technical abilities of the stage as they flew around the low gravity environment. Zero-g plays weren’t exactly done at zero-g. The strength of the gravity usually changed depending on the story and the feeling it needed to evoke, but lowering the gravity made it possible to perform maneuvers regular gravity wouldn’t allow. It just made their movements grander, more dramatic, as they crossed swords and battled to their death.

Sollit took a blow to the arm. He cried out his pain as the audience stared in strained silence. Tillos, seeing that he struck him, knowing he was victorious even if Sollit was unaware, fell back. But that just left him open to Sollit – poisoned, but not yet effected by it – who leapt towards him. He struck right through Tillos’ chest, the physical prop in his hand collapsing as the light effects of the stage made it appear to be coming from his back.

The entire stage stilled.

Skara screamed.

Sollit and Tillos both collapsed.

Tillos remained motionless, dead, but Sollit had enough energy for one last soliloquy, professing his deep love for Skara, before he passed as well, going limp in her arms. She cried for them, delivering her own monologue about all she had lost, before gathering her strength and swearing to protect the people, alone, for the rest of her life.

For the rootavin people, that was a much deeper blow than it would be to other species. Female rootavin typically grouped around a male. The bond between the females in a unit was so deep, they ceased to be a singular and became completely plural.

That was a bond Sollit didn’t really need to fake to understand. Through the bond he shared with his twin, he could feel the satisfaction of a show well performed. Tillos worked with Corvidair, the leader of the troupe and the director of the shows, to make sure everything went off without a hitch. A zero-g play involved even more technical aspects than acting, so a show going off absolutely perfectly always felt good.

Sollit, of course, was proud too. But he was prouder of how well everyone had acted. The performance was his art, and he was rather certain he and Tillos had been flawless tonight. They hadn’t messed up a single line or missed a single mark.

When Skara finished her tear-jerking speech, the audience showed their own appreciation by calling and stomping and cheering – however their individual species showed their approval to performers. The stage went dark. Sollit and Tillos straightened up as they took their place beside Skara, the other actors coming out to join them. They floated in the air, raising their hands, as the lights came back up and gave the audience a chance to cheer them on properly now that the show was over.

Sollit lived for moments like this. The cheers of the crowd. The satisfaction of a job well done, feeling the same through the bond he shared with his brother. It was a good day. No, it was a great day! It couldn’t get much better than this.

After soaking in the approval of the audience, the actors all dropped as the lights dimmed, floating down and leaving the stage through a dark tunnel that led to the bright, organized chaos that was the understage after a show. There were props, costumes, actors, stagehands all moving around, rushing about, talking and laughing loudly since the show was over and they didn’t need to remain silent anymore.

“Good show, Sollit,” Tillos said as the two of them walked through the crowd, heading to their dressing room. There was always a meet and greet with the audience after the show and they had to hurry and freshen themselves up. They would still wear their costumes, of course, but they needed to fix their makeup and fix their outfits. They were a fantasy, and they couldn’t look tired and exhausted or that would ruin the image they cultivated to the public.

“You as well,” Sollit smiled at his brother’s serious face. “I don’t think we messed up at all. Did we?”

“Skara missed her second to last mark, where she was meant to be kneeling, watching us fight, but it wasn’t by much. I doubt the audience even noticed.”

Sollit couldn’t help but laugh. “Ever the perfectionist. If they wouldn’t notice and it didn’t affect the show, then it was a perfect hit.”

“Ever the optimist,” Tillos returned with a grin of his own. “But you aren’t wrong. It was a great final show for The Gilded and Tarnished Love.”

“I want to do a happy play next time,” Sollit frowned, leading the way into their dressing room. It was exactly as they left it before taking the stage tonight – Sollit’s half messy and chaotic, Tillos’ side rigidly organized and neat.

They were twin avanava males. In some respects, they were the exact same person. Their hearts were bound in a bond as tight as matehood. To the Coalition, they were considered a singular individual – just one spread between two bodies. The fact that they shared one soul and, often, spoke with one voice, meant that they might as well be the same person.

Even on their home planet, Yeluka Akuley, they were, at once, considered different people and one person at the same time. But there were still differences between them. Tillos was exacting in all things. Sollit was enthusiastic in all things. He would clean his mess later, because he didn’t actually want things to be disorganized, it just became that way as he got ready. But even after he cleaned, it would never be as neat and precise as Tillos.

Sollit wasn’t sure how to describe it to others. Sharing his heart, his soul, with his brother was so natural, it seemed stranger to him to think about not having another person sharing his emotions. He was aware of his own pride and joy at their performance, but he was also aware of Tillos’. His brother’s feelings fed into him, just as his fed back. They were enhanced by each other. Sollit felt Tillos’ emotions, but he was also aware that they weren’t his own, even as he experienced them as if they were.

“Gifts arrived,” his brother pointed out as they walked in, indicating to the table along the back wall – the only thing in the room that there was only one of, though it’s position still meant the room was a perfect mirror of itself. Sollit and Tillos might have left home, but they still enjoyed the symmetry of the architecture and design from Yeluka Akuley.

Covering the table were all the fan gifts. They were gathered before the show so that the fans didn’t have to hold them while watching, and then brought to the dressing room while they performed. There were boxes, treats, flowers, pictures, holos – all sorts of things.

“And there are Biella’s,” Sollit chuckled, crossing over to grab them. It was always nice when their fans appreciated their culture enough to remember that avanava males used two of everything – except a female, of course. In this case, however, it wasn’t consideration so much as the female that gifted them knowing better. Their biggest fan was an avanava female, so naturally, she would be aware that they needed two, identical presents.

“Succar beetles,” Tillos said, having taken the top off the box. “Haven’t had these in a long time.”

“It will be good to have a taste of home,” Sollit agreed, chuckling, setting them aside.

The two of them worked quickly to at least put eyes on everything on the table. It wasn’t necessary, but they found that their fans were more appreciative when they could remember the presents they’d been given, even if they hadn’t had time to enjoy them yet.

After they finished, they sat down at their vanities and began working on fixing their hair and makeup to get them back to perfection. Tillos gave him a time warning for how long until they needed to get to the fan meetup. Sollit, meanwhile, checked their messages.

One from their parents, congratulating them on another great show. They weren’t there in person, of course, but they watched the streamed version back home. They never missed an opening or closing performance, no matter how many times they’d seen the show.

“Both of our fathers said the same thing I did about the stupidity of the brothers,” Sollit laughed, telling Tillos over his shoulder.

“There are a lot of species that are foolish about mating in pairs,” Tillos sighed, leaning back in his chair as he stared up at nothing. “It’s not that I don’t understand monogamy…”

“Right,” Sollit agreed without him needing to finish. They were, in a way, monogamous – if one agreed that Sollit and Tillos were the same person. Though, to their way of thinking, they were still sharing as two separate people. It was correct either way though.

The depth to which avanava males felt bonded to their twin varied. Sollit knew some that insisted they were the exact same person and even spoke in plural, the way rootavin females would once they had grouped up. There were also those that stated they were only bonded to their twin, but that they were certainly two completely separate people.

For Sollit and Tillos, they were somewhere in the middle – as most avanava males would be. Sollit was a full person on his own, but he just wasn’t complete without Tillos. They were two people that still only added up to one person.

Sollit couldn’t imagine mating without Tillos – and he knew the feeling was reciprocated. The fact that they shared their hearts meant that, when it came to affection and desire, what they felt was always magnified for being reflected in each other.

Which made everything better. Honestly. Sollit felt sorry for males that were alone their whole life without being able to appreciate the bond he shared with Tillos.

“Mother is congratulating us on the show,” he said, smiling as he read her well wishes.

“Our birthday is coming up,” Tillos responded thoughtfully. “We need to remember to get her something.”

“Already? I can’t keep up anymore since we switched to the Standard calendar,” Sollit laughed. “Let’s shop for that tomorrow.”

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 na?ve.”

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, that was their 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 been that expensive 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.

‘ Your mate is a human by the name of Leah Williams. ’