Page 17 of His Unicorn Alpha (Shifters Sanctuary #3)

I n the following weeks, Eric, Ollie and I continued to research, searching old records for any mentions of unicorns or the old magics. Word traveled through the pack about the existence of unicorns, specifically the unicorn living in Shifters Sanctuary, and Micah spent a substantial amount of time meeting our neighbors and other members of the town and patiently promised that he would attend the next pack run if only to sate their curiosity. (And, when he followed through on the promise, there was no chance of him and I having any alone time until we took flight.)

M eanwhile, Sage and Dexter checked in from various international locations, where they were presumably meeting with other dragons who might be hording old texts or, better still, personal knowledge of the magic or old ways.

In my personal life, Micah and I grew closer. He returned to New York for a few days to retrieve his clothes and personal belongings, organized the termination of his lease (apologizing to his roommates for the sudden and short notice), and then formally moved into my home.

My omega preened at the knowledge that our alpha — my alpha— was staking his claim so officially and publicly. After hundreds of years without alphas, I considered myself an independent omega, but there was still something comforting on a cellular level in feeling so wanted by my alpha that he would restructure his entire life for me and our pups.

Speaking of our pups, I woke one morning, roughly a month following our bonding, to a much rounder belly than the one I had gone to sleep with. It was mind boggling to experience, but I had most certainly ‘popped’ overnight. At almost eighteen weeks pregnant with triplets, I was surprised that it had not happened earlier…but then, my belly had been soft and rounded to begin with.

My mate and I had fallen into a routine where he would wake early, go for a jog in human form, return and shower, then crawl back into bed with me. On this particular morning, I woke while he was still showering, and he emerged from the ensuite bathroom in a billow of steam with his towel cinched around his waist.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, closing the distance between the bathroom door and the bed. “I felt surprise from the bond and—oh, wow .”

I was rubbing the pronounced swell of my belly, still awed by my sudden overnight change of physiology. We slept naked, but I did not bother to cover up. My mate probably knew my body better than I did by that point.

I had yet to feel the babies move, but now it felt so much more real just seeing the evidence of their existence. Looking up at Micah, I blinked back tears of awe and happiness. “It feels very real now.”

“I’ll bet,” he sank to his knees on the carpeted floor, bringing his face in line with the side of my rounded abdomen, “can I…”

“You never need permission with me, darling,” I murmured, feeling his awe and trepidation trickle through the link connecting us. “I trust you.”

It honestly ran much deeper than simple trust and affection, but I was aware that I had already piled a lot onto the man’s plate already. Springing big words like ‘I love you’ on him when he was still coming to terms with everything else did not seem fair.

Nevertheless, I was certain that he could feel how I felt about him, and it had not yet sent him running for the hills.

His hand shook before he placed it ever so gently beside mine, and then he dropped a whisper soft kiss on the stretching skin, too. A lump developed in my throat at the tender gesture, making it hard to swallow.

“Pretty much halfway,” he murmured, rubbing over the distention in a swooping circle. “That’s” —he glanced up, his smile fading— “hey, sugar, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head, trying —and failing— to swallow around the emotion. “You are a good man…a good alpha,” I told him. “This is all hormones, but seeing you just now, imagining the father you will be…Fate has been kind to me. Kinder than I deserve.”

“We’re not—”

“No, no,” I acknowledged, “there is no need to circle back to the things I did wrong, I know. But I still feel incredibly lucky that you are my mate, Micah. My alpha.”

Pushing to his feet, he removed his towel, throwing it in the direction of the bathroom. He crawled onto his side of the bed, pressing his long, lean body along the length of mine. “I feel just as lucky to have you,” he said, nuzzling his smooth cheek against my goatee. “You’re giving me a life I could only dream about. A pack where I don’t feel like an outsider,” he placed his hand on my belly again, “a family —children— of my own. A future where I don’t feel like I’m constantly scrambling to have a purpose. That’s all because you accepted me as your mate, Bran. As your alpha. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that I don’t feel like I’m physically disappointing anymore, because you’re kind of perfect for me.”

Love flickered through the bond between us: an emotion so pure and so layered that I couldn’t quite describe it. Nor could I tell you which of us it started with. We both felt it, both looped it back to one another.

I chuckled wetly, feeling overwhelmed all over again. “Only kind of perfect?”

Instead of answering, Micah hummed and kissed my jaw, then down my neck, then over my chest. My nipples were still sensitive, but ripples of intense pleasure shot across my nerve endings as he nibbled gently over one pebbled nub and then the other. His hand stroked my rapidly swelling cock as he continued to toy with my chest. I became slick, and I writhed under his attentions, gasping when he released my erection and slid two fingers inside me without warning.

“Oh, fuck, Micah…” I all but purred, rocking my hips to match the rhythm of his fingers. “Gods, yes .”

“You get so wet for me, sugar,” he crooned into my ear before biting down gently on my lobe. “I love the way you feel on my fingers, so hot and ready for me.”

“ Nnngh. ”

He was rocking his hips as well, and I felt the sticky, wet head of his hard cock leaving trails of precum on the side of my belly. I wanted to beg for him to slip inside me, to fill me up with his perfect dick and his amazing knot, but his fingers felt too good.

“I love feeling how turned on you get,” he whispered hotly, his face still plastered to the side of mine, “with your slick, and your perfect cock, and through the bond. I’m surrounded by your pleasure, sweetheart. I love it so much.”

Every thrust of his wrist took me closer and closer to the edge of release. With the way my hormones had been, I felt like I was perpetually aroused, but it was an entirely different level once Micah encouraged it.

“I want to feel you wrapped around my knot so badly, Bran,” he continued with his beautiful, filthy and somehow still so sweet monologue, “want you to squeeze every drop of cum from my dick until I can’t give even a tiny bit more.”

I felt my scales break out around my temples and over my forehead, and I was unable to hold them back.

Micah’s smile teased at my cheek, and satisfaction rumbled across our mystical connection. “That’s it,” his voice dipped low with additional lust, “that’s what I want. Lose yourself, sugar. Give in to how good this feels. Let me take care of you.”

His nose brushed over the scales along my temple and I groaned at the burst of pure bliss I felt from him doing so.

“M-Micah…” I pleaded his name, but I had no idea what I was pleading for.

“Fuck, sweetheart, you really like it when I touch your scales, don’t you? You get even wetter for me” —as if to test his theory, he pressed a kiss to the scales along my hairline and I could feel my slick increase— “ yes , baby, like that. Just like that.”

My neglected cock throbbed in time with my erratic heartbeat. However, I was too lost to the pleasure to take care of it myself. I was panting as I writhed. I needed… something . Anything. I wanted to come, but I wanted the moment to last forever. I wanted my mate inside me, but I also never wanted him to stop fucking me with his fingers. I wanted him to keep saying those decadent, naughty things. I wanted…I wanted…

“Bran, sugar, fuck yes…keep spilling over my fingers…God, I’m just imagining being inside your perfect hole again, filling you all up, breeding you so you’re always full of my pups.”

“Fuck!” I roared and arched from the bed, clamping around his fingers as I came, cock untouched, all over the underside of my swollen belly. The orgasm was short, but intense.

Micah groaned and swore as the feelings of it through the bond pushed him to orgasm as well, coating my side with his release even as I felt his pleasure ricochet back to me, making me come again, however weakly.

“Shit,” he fought to catch his breath as he flopped onto his back, then winced as the movement jostled his knot, sending jolts of pleasure through the bond again, “I didn’t mean to come, too.”

Laughing softly, I shook my head and rolled carefully onto my side to face him, heedless of the mess I was making on the bedding. “I will never get used to how good bonded sex is,” I informed him. “It is like you know exactly what to do and say to make every experience…” I searched for the right word.

“Mind-blowing?” he offered playfully. “World-rocking? Life-changing?”

Snorting, I nodded, already feeling sleepy from the effects of a strong orgasm. “All of the above.”

“I’m gonna need another shower,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.

My eyes shut of their own accord, and I leaned into the touch. “Mmhmm.”

He chuckled, and his fingers continued to stroke over my scalp. “Sleep, sweetheart. We’ll clean up later.”

“At what point was someone going to tell me we were researching unicorns because my big brother got knocked up by one?” Sage’s voice demanded from the lab’s doorway.

I dropped the report I was working on and swiveled my chair around to face him. My younger brother, the middle child between Eric and I, smiled broadly at me. He was as physically different to me as Eric, but he looked nothing like our youngest sibling, either. Tall, almost lanky in his leanness, and with long, vibrant red hair, Sage was the most stereotypical omega of the three of us, appearance wise. His eyes were a piercing bright blue, and he must have been spending more time in the sun than usual, because his skin was almost brown with the covering of freckles over his arms and face.

“Sage,” I greeted with a wide smile, “it is good to see you.”

It had been months since he and Dexter had left on their last magic-finding mission. I hadn’t realized how close we had become since moving to Shifters Sanctuary until he was no longer here. We kept in touch via text messages and the occasional phone call, but that did not compare to being able to speak to him in person.

“So, we’re just not going to address the elephant-sized baby bump in the room, then?” he teased.

“We are,” I assured him, and pushed out of my chair with a muffled groan. Ever since my belly had ‘popped’ two weeks earlier, it felt as though it had doubled in size. The strain the distention was putting on my back was almost ridiculous. “However, let me say hello properly first.”

He eyed my belly with caution as I crossed the space between us, then made a soft ‘oh’ sound as I wrapped my arms around him and brought him in for a hug.

“Jesus,” he muttered as we pulled apart, looking down at my stomach with equal parts awe and horror, “you’re huge , Bran.”

“Be thankful that my hormones are behaving today. Yesterday, that comment would have set off a stupid amount of tears.” I cocked my head and sighed. “And I might have thrown a chair at you, too.”

“Consider me warned, then,” he smiled, still looking down between us. “Eric said you’re having triplets?”

“It was nice of him to deliver all my news for me,” I griped with no small degree of sarcasm.

Sage snorted. “You know Eric; he always has to be the center of attention.”

“Youngest child syndrome,” I sighed. “He’s such a brat.”

“Still, I kind of appreciated the head’s up. If I’d walked in here and seen you without the warning, I might have had a heart attack.” Sage accompanied the gentle rebuke with a push to my shoulder. “What’s with not telling me before now?”

“I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Okay…but you’re, what, five months in? What would you have done if I didn’t come back before they were born? Waited to throw three babies at me and be all ‘congratulations, Sage, you’re an uncle!’?”

“And you call Eric the dramatic one,” I grumbled, rubbing at my aching back. Then I shrugged and exhaled. “Honestly? I do not know. It wasn’t the most traditional conception and…I suppose I was trying to avoid your disappointment for as long as possible.”

“Yeah,” he guided me back to my desk and helped me into my seat, the corners of his lips lifting at my sigh of relief, “Eric told me you helped yourself to research materials.” He leaned his bony ass on the edge of my desk and crossed his long legs at the ankle, gripping the edge of the desk with his palms as he drummed out a random beat on the underside with his fingertips. “I asked him if he could blame you.”

“You…what? Really?”

“Come on, Bee. It’s me. I want kids as badly as you do. I would have done the same thing, given half a chance.” He chewed his bottom lip. “Could you…” Pausing, he cleared his throat and leaned down to whisper. “If my eggs ever do their thing in your petri dishes, can you tell me? Please?”

I blinked back at him, stunned. “Eric would kill me.”

Sage cast his gaze to my belly again. I recognized the longing and heartache on his face. It matched my own, or at least the way I had felt before Micah’s sperm had fertilized my eggs. How could I deny him the happiness that I had found, even hypothetically?

“Of course,” I said softly, without needing to hear him beg. “I will tell you.”

“This is why you’re my favorite brother,” he replied, straightening back up from his stooped position. Despite the playfulness of his tone, he wiped at his eyes with the knuckle of his index finger, and I had to swallow back tears of my own.

I blamed hormones.

“So,” Sage broke the strangely emotional mood, “tell me more about this alpha of yours. Eric said he’s a unicorn. I’m guessing that’s why Dex and I have been on a wild goose —or, I guess, horse— chase?”

I drooped, losing hope that Sage had brought back vital information. “Yes. And he is magnificent.”

“So Eric said. I’m a little jealous that I haven’t seen him in shifted form. But we did meet briefly earlier.” He winked. “He’s pretty, Bee.”

“He is,” I agreed, once again allowing my adoration for my mate to run through me and into the bond. I received an answering wave of bewildered amusement for my efforts, and I chuckled.

“You lucked out. Babies and an alpha…” Sage sighed. “What I’d give to have that.”

I couldn’t assure him that it was in the cards for him, so I did not bother trying to placate him. “I know,” I said instead. “Which is why we are hoping you and Dexter can find someone who can help us with the magic of the old ways, or some texts that might be able to explain why some people have hidden alpha syndrome and what we can do to locate them and unlock their alpha sides without requiring an omega and a mating to occur.”

“Well, I had no luck. Dex called me from Madrid about a week ago and said he’d found a lead, though. Haven’t heard anything from him since.”

I frowned. There was something off about the way he spoke about his best friend. I knew they had been estranged for a hundred years or so, but I didn’t know the backstory there, either. At the time, I hadn’t been bothered, but now that I was close to my brothers again, I found that I did care.

“Is everything all right between the two of you?” I asked carefully. “Things seem strained again.”

Sage shook his head before I even finished asking. “It’s all good. You know Dex — he’s also a bit of a drama llama.”

“He has seemed oddly subdued since he came to live here.”

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it or he won’t.”

There was definitely something happening there, but I knew better than to push Sage. If he did not want to discuss it, I would leave him be.

Clearing my throat, I took the conversation back to safer ground. “So,” I began, “No luck on the magic front. What about unicorns?”

“I did find a super old journal which mentioned them,” Sage admitted, and I sat up straighter, ignoring the twinge in my back.

“Go on…”

“The dragon who owned it wouldn’t let me bring it with me,” he scowled, “but I did borrow it and scanned every damn page of the thing. I gave the file to Eric before I came in here, and he’s going to go through it and see if there’s anything useful in there.”

“Well,” I slumped again, immediately feeling the pressure in my back release, “that is still a good sign that Micah is not the first of his kind.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Sage grinned at me. “Now, be a good big brother and tell me everything about him. Not the science-y shit: the fun stuff. How is the whole being mated and bonded thing working out? Are you in luuuurve ?”

I laughed. “It is going well. We work very well together, which is not a surprise, considering our theories on fate and compatibility. As for love,” I lowered my voice and felt heat rise to my cheeks. “We have not said anything to each other, but…I believe so. Still, it has only been six weeks. We are not rushing anything.”

“Uh huh. Not rushing anything,” he repeated drily. “Because bonding the day you met, moving in together, and having three babies together in a handful of months is totally taking it slow, right?”

“I think I preferred it when you were almost unreachable,” I pouted, though the twitching of my lips gave my amusement away. “And you are correct, of course. Things between us are quite serious and permanent…but, somehow, saying the words out loud is daunting.”

Sage smirked knowingly. “Ah, but you’ve still told each other silently, huh?”

“Through the bond, yes. We share feelings across the connection between us. It is…something else, Sage.” I rubbed the center of my chest. “Truly. I wish more than anything for you to be able to experience this.”

“I live in hope, big brother.”

I reached out and squeezed his knee. “I do as well.”

Who knew? Perhaps Dexter’s lead would bring us one step closer to finding the answers we all wanted so desperately.