Page 16 of His Unicorn Alpha (Shifters Sanctuary #3)
N umber three —four? fifty? whatever— on the list of things I had not been expecting when I planned my return to Shifters Sanctuary: no longer being a horse. I still felt like a horse, but I wasn’t a horse.
I was a mythical flying horse with a horn in the middle of my forehead.
A unicorn.
I was a unicorn.
Days after that revelation, and I was still trying to process the change. Still trying to reconcile the me I had always known with the me I had become. The me I apparently had always been deep down inside.
My alpha was a preening, cocky asshole. From the moment I had shifted, I had felt his pride —my inner pride— warming my soul. I had felt right in ways I hadn’t felt while shifted before. Was it any wonder I had never truly felt like I belonged in my original pack?
I wasn’t one of them. I’d been an imposter and I hadn’t known it.
Also, this pretty much cemented my parents’ suspicion that my dad wasn’t biologically my father. It didn’t change how much I loved my dad, but I had to admit that I wish I had known earlier, that I could have researched, or tracked the shaman down, or…something.
Because being blindsided by being an entirely different breed or species of shifter was something else.
“Do you think you’re the only one of your kind?” Beck asked me as we sat on his back porch, each nursing a bottle of beer as his kids ran around on the grassed area in front of us. “Or do you think there are more unicorns out there?” He snorted and shook his head. “Unicorns. Jesus, that sounds outrageous.” He shot me an apologetic grimace. “Shit, sorry.”
I waved him off as the sound of toddlers battling waged on in the background of our conversation. “Nah, I get it. It feels outrageous, even though I’m definitely a unicorn now.”
I’d tried shifting twice more, just in case the first time was an anomaly or a shared hallucination. Both times, I had shifted into the golden-colored unicorn, wings and all.
“So…is this just a you thing, do you think?” Beck repeated his question, then leaned forward in his seat and called out, “Rory, we don’t sit on our brother’s head! Let Duke up, please!” After his daughter reluctantly complied, he slumped back in his seat. “They’re little savages.”
Case in point: as soon as he was able to get back to his feet, Duke roared and crash tackled his sister back down to the grass.
I laughed.
“Oh, sure, laugh it up,” he sighed as Rory screamed and wrestled her twin with a vicious sort of energy that fascinated me. “Just remember, you’re getting three of these. Good luck, I say.”
“Yeah, well, maybe mine will be docile.” I winced as Duke cried out when his sister sank her teeth into his arm.
“Shit,” Beck sighed again and pushed to his feet. “Anyone who says they get easier as they get older is a lying liar who lies.”
“Daddy!” Duke cried, shoving his sister to the ground and making a break for Beck. “My bited! My ouchie!”
“I know, bud,” Beck scooped him up and kissed over the tiny toothy imprints in the otherwise soft, unblemished toddler’s skin. “I’ve kissed it better.”
“Awe-y mean!” From his perch on Beck’s hip, Duke glared at his sister, who poked her tongue back out at him.
“Rory was a little mean, yes,” Beck agreed, rubbing his son’s back, “but you were both playing rough.”
“Awe-y mean!” the kid repeated.
Beck nodded again, then looked my way. I didn’t love the glint in his eyes before he adopted an excited tone, “I know what will make it better,” he declared to his whimpering toddler. “Who wants to see a unicorn?”
Ten minutes later, I was cursing my new pack alpha and both of his hell spawn. They couldn’t hear me, though, because I was in my shifted form, but if Beck didn’t stop them from tugging at my tail and wings, I was going to run him through with the pointy weapon permanently fastened to my forehead.
“Ooh-nicown!” Rory shrieked happily, her pudgy little hands smacking down on my back, courtesy of the fact that her father —my former friend— had put both toddlers there like I was one of those pony rides.
The only one riding me like a pony is my mate , I grumbled to myself, immediately feeling better at the images the thought brought to mind.
“Yes, he is a unicorn,” Beck responded to his daughter with the patience of a man not currently being treated like a fairground attraction, “and you have to be gentle with him.”
“Pity,” Duke added.
“He is very pretty,” Beck agreed.
“What are you… Beckett ,” Oliver’s exasperated voice came from the house and I turned to find Beck’s omega scowling down at us, “did you even ask Micah if it was okay before you turned him into their latest distraction?”
I couldn’t contain my nicker of amusement as Beck’s shoulders slumped guiltily. “He loves them, though,” he argued. “Plus, he’s going to have triplets. Think of this as practice for his future.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Ollie’s response was accompanied by a shake of his head, but even I could hear the fondness in his tone. “It’s nap time now, anyway” — he pointedly ignored the dual cries of ‘No nap!’ from my back— “so you can stop torturing your friend.”
The kids cried and stomped their little feet as they were hauled away and up onto the porch, and I took the opportunity to shift back to my human form and hurriedly put my clothes back on. By the time Beck returned from handing his offspring to his mate, I was dressed again, standing in the middle of the expanse of yard space with my arms folded and an eyebrow raised.
Beck gave me a sheepish smile. “So…your unicorn form is awesome,” he started, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Thanks,” I said as I chuckled. “But that’s still the last time you volunteer me as your kids’ pet for the day.”
“Aww, but Brandt always goes dragon for them.”
The mention of my mate made me smile. “He would.”
“I thought you said you liked kids,” Beck teased.
“I said I’d always wanted kids of my own. Your monsters are your problem, dude.”
He snorted. “Oh, in that case, let’s see if I’m sympathetic when you’re getting negative three hours sleep a night.” He shuddered exaggeratedly. “There’s a reason they use sleep deprivation as a torture device.”
“You’re my Pack Alpha now,” I reminded him, giving his shoulder a nudge with mine as we made our way back up onto the porch, collecting our lukewarm beers, “you have to be sympathetic to me.”
He took a draw from his beer and made a face at the bottle before asking, “Are you okay with that? Me being your Alpha?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
I followed him inside and he took my beer from me as we entered the kitchen, replacing it with a cold bottle from the refrigerator. “Well,” he replied, then gestured for me to head through to the living room, “we were roommates. Equals. Friends. I wasn’t even a shifter. And now I’m the official leader of the pack you’ve moved into and that…well, it might make things awkward. Especially with you being another alpha, and one of such a unique breed…Like, I mean, I haven’t learned all the rules yet, but you could probably challenge me for my spot here.”
Only just having sat down on the couch, I almost choked on the mouthful of cold, crisp alcohol I had just taken. Coughing and spluttering, I shook my head. “Challenge you?” I asked incredulously. “Dude, no. I don’t want that kind of responsibility. It’s enough coming to terms with being an alpha at all, and there’s the ‘gonna be a dad’ thing on top of that. My dance card is full, your position as the pack’s boss is safe.”
“I’m not your boss,” he protested, then groaned and rolled his eyes when he realized I was teasing him. “Dick.”
I shrugged. “You’re the one making a big deal out of the Pack Alpha thing. I just want to settle down with my baby mama and live the life that makes my inner alpha content.”
“Oh, please let me be there when you call Brandt your baby mama in front of him.”
“You don’t think he’d find it endearing? He likes my nicknames and sweet talking.”
It was Beck’s turn to cough over a mouthful of beer. “Dude,” he complained, “I don’t need to hear that.”
“I didn’t mean in a sex way…but he does like that, too, I guess.”
“ Anyway ,” he pushed on, ignoring my childish attempts to make him uncomfortable. “You never got a chance to answer earlier: do you think you’re the only unicorn out there? Some sort of…magical anomaly?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. Eric and Brandt seem to think that’s unlikely, as surprised as they both were by my new form, but seeing as they can’t find any records of unicorn shifters at all…” I shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Have they reached out to Sage and Dex? Asked them to add ‘find unicorns’ to their ‘find magic’ mission?” He paused and screwed up his nose, leaning his head against the headrest of his faded armchair. “Listen to the words coming out of my mouth. This sounds surreal.”
“Yeah,” I bobbed my head and took another sip of my drink, then leaned forward and let the bottle dangle from my fingertips between my spread knees. Tilting my head in his direction, I added, “I grew up as a shifter and this all sounds far-fetched to me, too.” Taking a breath, I continued, “As for Sage and Dexter…yeah. Eric called them the day I shifted. We’re all working blind here at the moment.”
Snorting, Beck brought his bottle to his lips again, “Story of my life, man.”