Page 18 of His Unicorn Alpha (Shifters Sanctuary #3)

D exter Burnside —and, man, did I find the dragons’ surnames kind of hilarious, or what?— was a whirlwind of a man. He burst into Eric and Brandt’s clinic in a dramatic flourish, heralding his own arrival with a loud, British accented, “Your savior has arrived!”

Considering I was just about to walk into the exam room with Brandt so we could see our babies on Eric’s ultrasound machine, I turned to face the new dragon with amusement and irritation in equal measures. He stopped short when he saw me, and I could see that he was sizing me up, his sharp gaze traveling from my feet to the top of my head, while Brandt exasperatedly greeted, “Hello, Dexter.”

I made no secret of the way I eyed him over in kind. He wasn’t quite as tall as the others, but the way he stood —shoulders back, chin raised— told me he thought highly of himself. I supposed he had every reason to: he was attractive. Slender, wearing a tailored suit, with an angular face and perfectly styled blonde hair.

“Bran,” he practically purred at my mate, smiling toothily as he oozed smarm, “you naughty boy; you should have said that you found yourself an alpha.” He dropped his gaze to Brandt’s belly. “There’s something in the water in this Podunk town, isn’t there?”

From the reception desk, I was almost certain I heard Damon growl, and that suspicion was confirmed when Dexter turned to face the desk and said, “Now now, kitty. Behave.”

“Dex,” Eric cut in with a bite of authority, “leave Day alone. Go wait in my office. I’ve got an appointment to finish first, then you can tell me everything you’ve discovered.”

“Spoilsport,” Dexter sighed dramatically, but he headed past us and down the short hallway to Eric’s clinic office.

“He’s a handful, isn’t he?” I asked, watching him disappear into the room in question.

“He is, but he’s all bark, no bite.” Eric said. “Now,” he beamed and practically bounced on his heels with excitement, “let’s go see your babies.”

“Oh my God,” I muttered as the first of three humanoid forms appeared on the black and white computer monitor. It was curled up, but there was no denying the slope of its spine, the shape of its head and face, nor the tiny little hand flexing in the black space above a rounded little belly. “That’s a baby.”

“What did you think was in here?” Brandt asked. “Eggs? Dragons? Winged-foals ?”

“Shut up,” I replied without heat, unable to tear my gaze away from the screen. “I just…this is…” Stopping to take a steadying breath, I tried to calm my suddenly frantic heartbeat.

That was a baby.

A real baby.

Hard proof that in a few months’ time, I really was going to be a dad.

“And here’s number two,” Eric said cheerfully, moving the transducer across Brandt’s belly and showing another curled up humanoid form on the screen. This one was kicking a little foot in the black area surrounding it.

“Oh my God,” I repeated, with only a tiny bit more panic in my voice.

I had missed Eric’s twelve-week ultrasound, and with everything else that had happened in the couple of months since, neither Brandt or Eric had organized another one until his scheduled twenty-week scan. It was my understanding that, because he was carrying multiples, there would be a few additional scans in the leadup to their due date, just to stay on top of any potential issues that might pop up.

“This one’s looking good, too,” Eric told us, “so let’s visit baby number three.”

As the wand moved again, I watched the screen. Sure enough, a third little body appeared within seconds.

“Is it…smaller than the others?” I asked quietly, finally shifting my gaze away to observe Eric’s face.

He was frowning a little, which I didn’t think was a great sign. I watched as he used his other hand to take screenshots and measurements, little yellow numbers appearing on the screen as he worked.

“Yeah,” he eventually answered, sounding distracted. “This one’s a bit smaller than their siblings…but it’s not unusual in multiples for one or two to be undersized.”

“ Undersized ?!” I repeated with concern, then I looked down at Brandt for reassurance.

He was frowning at his brother. “Is it still within a healthy developmental range?”

My gaze swung back to Eric, catching the minute downturn of his lips. “…Yes. But only just, Bee.”

“What…what does that mean?” I demanded of both of them, not liking the unspoken conversation that seemed to be taking place between the two men of science and medicine. I didn’t have that background. “Can we fix it somehow?”

“We just need to monitor them all a bit more closely,” Eric answered me in a tone that felt almost like practiced reassurance. “We can’t really treat them from outside the womb.”

“So, what does that mean, exactly?”

“We would be looking at an early delivery,” Brandt answered calmly. He looked at his brother. “We should buy incubators, just in case. And—”

“I know,” Eric’s tone was the most serious and soothing I had ever heard it in relation to either of his siblings. “And we will. As soon as we wrap up here, I will arrange it.”

Dread settled in the pit of my stomach. The panic which had been welling up in the face of my looming fatherhood was nothing in comparison to the fear of something going wrong. Of my babies needing medical intervention before they were even born.

I grasped Brandt’s hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back. Neither of us said a word.

“Like I said,” Eric resumed taking his measurements, “baby three is still within an acceptable size range for their twenty-weeks gestation. We don’t have to panic, but we do need to be aware that there might be complications, and it’s better to prepare for the worst-case scenarios early.”

I didn’t want to think the words ‘worst-case scenario' in relation to my children or my mate.

“Let’s hear the heartbeats,” Eric offered when neither of us responded to his attempt to reassure us. “I promise you; this little one is looking super strong.”

That did actually make me feel a bit better. “Okay.”

Eric flipped a little switch on the machine and then pressed the transducer down on Brandt’s belly. Brandt bitched a little, reminding his brother that his bladder was full, but he stopped complaining as the fast, loud whoosh-whoosh-whoosh- ing filled the air.

“See?” Eric grinned. “Baby three’s heartbeat is perfect.”

Tears spilled over Brandt’s cheeks, and I felt my own eyes mist over.

“Wanna know their sex?” Eric asked. “Three’s decided to be an exhibitionist.”

I let out a startled laugh and I looked to Brandt for his decision. “It might make deciding on names and stuff easier?” I suggested. “But I don’t mind if you want the surprise.”

He shook his head. “I would like to know.”

“Then we find out.”

“So, that’s a yes?” Eric confirmed, and we nodded. He smiled. “Three’s a girl, guys. Congratulations.”

I honestly hadn’t given a thought to what their biological sex would be, but finding out still hit me hard in the solar plexus. “Oh, wow,” I choked out. “That’s…wow.”

Brandt nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Shall we see if One and Two are just as cooperative?” Eric offered.

“Please,” Brandt asked, his voice gravelly and strained with emotion.

I committed the image of our daughter to memory as best I could before the transducer moved back to the baby flexing their hand.

“Okay, number one is being a little shy right now, but…” Eric moved the wand, trying to view the baby from a different angle. He contorted himself around Brandt’s belly and then— “Ah ha! Gotcha!” He took a screenshot, then pointed at the screen. “Number One is also a girl.”

As elation filled me once more, I couldn’t help noticing the flicker of disappointment on Brandt’s face as I turned to smile widely at him. It was only there for a moment, blinked away and replaced by a blinding smile that looked and felt genuine, but it was there nonetheless.

“Sugar?” I whispered, not quite sure why I was bothering, considering I knew Eric’s shifter hearing would hear me anyway. “What’s wrong?”

Brandt shook his head and cleared his throat. “Number Two,” he demanded of his brother. “Please.”

Eric swung the wand back to the second baby and did his contortionist act again. He cast his brother a brief, concerned glance, asking, “Are you sure you want to know?” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was an understanding there which I didn’t get. I was out of the loop, and I didn’t like it. “Don’t want a wildcard?”

Brandt shook his head.

Eric nodded, then smiled again. The same dull smile as moments earlier, not completely genuine.

“Congrats, guys. Another girl. The complete trifecta.”

“Sweetheart, please talk to me.”

Brandt hadn’t spoken since the ultrasound. I couldn’t feel any spikes of emotion through the bond, but I knew he was unhappy. Some part of that hurt me, though I was careful not to tell him so.

I hadn’t been a complete potato since I had moved to Shifters Sanctuary. I had been reading up on kids and parenting, preparing myself for the changes that were heading my way. Part of that had included reading articles about gender disappointment, even though Brandt and I had both agreed we didn’t care what sex our kids were.

It was only because I had read those articles that I knew Brandt might be feeling some kind of way about only having girls, and that his feelings were completely outside of his control. Still, would it be so bad to have girls? Ultimately, babies were babies, weren’t they? They all ate, slept, and pooped the same.

After hours of silence and feeling blocked out from our bond, I was beginning to feel frustrated. Not at the way he had reacted to the news of three girls, but to being deliberately shut out by the man I had been falling in love with.

From his curled-up position on the bed, Brandt finally spoke. His pained words were muffled by the pillow, but I heard them anyway. “I can’t, Micah.”

Carefully sitting on the edge of the mattress, I rubbed his back. “You can. I’m not going to judge you for feeling any particular way. I just…I don’t want you to shut me out.”

“I am a terrible person,” he lamented after another stretch of silence.

“You’re not.”

“I am!” I don’t think either of us was expecting the vehemence in his tone, and he shook his head again, softly repeating, “I am.”

“How? Explain it to me, Brandt, because what you’re feeling is valid.”

My mate rolled onto his back but kept his red-rimmed gaze directed at the wall. I supposed that was still an improvement, though I really wished he would look at me.

“Is it?” he demanded. “After everything I did…after knowing that there were no guarantees…is it truly fair of me to be disappointed that not one of our children will be a dragon? That my species still dies with those of us remaining scattered and miserable around the world?”

“But they’re not even born yet. We don’t know—”

“Dragons are an all-male race,” his voice hitched. “And I truly believed that I did not care what breed of shifter our children were…but…”

My heart sank. “Oh, sugar …”

“No. It is wrong of me to feel this way. I do not understand why I feel this way when I am still so excited to be having children at all. I love our daughters. I do not…I hate this irrational, awful feeling.”

“It’s not irrational,” I tried to soothe him. “You’re not saying you don’t want our girls. You’re not even disappointed that they are girls.”

He snorted derisively.

“No, sweetheart, you’re not. I know you’re not. The bond doesn’t lie, remember?” I reached for his hand and squeezed. “I think you’re upset because so much of your original justification for implanting the embryos revolved around potentially saving the dragons. Finding out that it hasn’t happened this time hurts. It’s allowed to hurt. We all want to make sure dragons survive, but you put your ethics and body on the line for it…”

Brandt burst into tears and moved to bury his face in his pillow again, but I didn’t want him to hide from me. Climbing over him so I could stretch out beside him, I tugged him in for a hug, not caring that his tears and snot were messing up my shirt.

“Let it out,” I murmured, pressing kisses to the top of his head. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

“I love them,” he repeated once he calmed down. “I love them so much and I feel guilty for…for this…”

“It’s okay to be sad about the situation with the dragons,” I assured him. “It is. It doesn’t mean that you love our kids any less.”

I listened to the quick inhalations as he fought to regain control of his emotions and I held him until he went lax and calm. “We’re going to find a way to save the dragons eventually,” I promised. “Dexter and Sage might find something to help. Or I’ll just have to live up to my promise to breed you over and over again.”

I meant the last bit as a joke, and I was relieved when Brandt chuckled wetly against my chest.

“Don’t make promises you cannot keep,” he muttered, but there was a hint of arousal and amusement accompanying the words.

“Like getting to fuck you into oblivion is such a hardship for me.”

He snorted, and the silence that fell between us felt comfortable again. After another minute or so, he said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not thinking me a monster. For working through this ridiculous episode instead of running away. For—”

“It wasn’t ridiculous,” I insisted, then gently cradled his chin between my thumb and index finger so I could make sure he was looking at me. “Bran, sweetheart, I can’t imagine how frustrating it must feel to not be able to hold onto your emotions as much as you’d like to, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to scare me away.”

“Still,” he sighed, “thank you.”

Kissing his forehead again, I replied, “Always, sugar.”