Her Pretend Alien Fiancé

Mina Okafor has spent three years growing a hybrid that could feed a colony, and she cannot get the Vithen licensing board to look at it, because the board only reads applications from settled, partnered scientists. Sorn is a Vithen botanist who will lose his research post unless he arrives at the summit with a human partner. Six days to rehearse a fake engagement, one ring, one shared apartment above the orbital greenhouse, and both of them get what they need. It should be simple. It is not, because the work is real, the long nights are real, and the public dance neither of them wants to stop is very real. When the high council investigates and offers one way out — a binding marriage — they take it, honestly, and then discover that a real relationship is harder than a fake one. Her Pretend Alien Fiancé is a sci-fi alien romance with a contract engagement, two botanists who fall in love over soil samples, and a rewritten contract on the last page.