Page 19 of His Unicorn Alpha (Shifters Sanctuary #3)
T he guilt I felt over my reaction to learning that none of my children would be dragons was difficult to shake off. Even though Micah assured me that my feelings were valid, it still felt wrong to feel any kind of disappointment regarding my babies. My daughters.
I was going to have three daughters.
Three unicorn daughters.
At least, I could only assume they would be unicorns. It was unlikely that they would be horses when Micah was clearly not really a horse shifter. Not that I understood quite how that worked, though, considering he had thought himself a horse for his entire life prior to releasing the mystical hold on his alpha and its abilities.
I did not enjoy not understanding the fundamentals of what had kept his unicorn form hidden, just as I did not like that we were still in the dark about how to unlock or release someone’s alpha side without the presence of a compatible mate. I understood that it was a mixture of science and magic, but the fact that it had been three years since Beckett and Oliver had accidentally unlocked Beck’s alpha and we were no closer to having answers was frustrating.
Cuddled up in my alpha’s arms, I grumbled when my phone rang, disturbing the peaceful silence. However, my disappointment and irritation melted away when Eric started speaking when I answered the call, not even waiting for me to say ‘hello’.
“Bran, get back to the clinic. Dex found something.”
“Does this say what I think it says?” my brother demanded the moment I stepped into his office. He pointed at the computer monitor and I leaned over his shoulder to read the scanned page on the screen.
It was handwritten, in spiky, cursive writing that, at first, seemed to be little more than scribbling. But then words began to jump out at me from the jumble in an unexpected mixture of Hungarian and Romanian. I let my greedy eyes scan the page from the start once my brain knew what it was looking at, and I felt my heart rate increasing as I read.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, and Eric sat back in his seat with a wide, satisfied smile.
“So it does?” he prodded, “My language skills are a bit rusty when it comes to reading. But…it basically affirms our theory, doesn’t it? That there’s a spell we can perform to unlock an alpha who hasn’t yet presented as one?”
“Yes, and there is mention of pheromones…well, what we know now to be pheromones,” I pointed at a sentence which essentially referred to unexplained scent signals between potential mates, “which appears to be key in the spellcasting.”
“Do you think we could replicate the pheromones synthetically? Rather than having to find an alpha’s potential or compatible mate, could we replicate a generic attraction pheromone to trigger them?” Eric started taking notes on his phone as he was talking, his eyes bright with excitement.
I did not blame him; I felt just as invigorated and eager to learn.
“Possibly,” I answered, considering the science behind his idea. I leaned in closer to the screen. “Are there more pages?” I asked. “More information than just the confirmation of our theories?”
“Yes, but nothing on the specifics of the magic,” Eric sounded disappointed. “It’s more an account of watching the spell cast on an infant born to shifter parents, without a mark and without the scent of a shifter.”
He looked up at me and I immediately understood. “Beck, Rex, and Brandi,” I nodded. “It does not explain Micah, though.”
“No,” Eric agreed, “but what if, like anything, the…let’s call it a gene? What if it has mutated…er, or evolved over time? What if it’s the same thing, only because he was born to mixed species of shifters, it presented differently due to different biological makeup?”
“How would we determine if that is the case?”
“Well, we’ve been testing their blood for DNA connections and chromosome anomalies…but maybe…” he started typing on his phone screen again, “I think we should invest in a mass spectrometer.”
“Oh, of course,” I wanted to facepalm. “A mass spectrometer would isolate known and unknown compounds, whereas the karyotype testing is performed under microscope…” I groaned. “How have we not considered this before?”
“We were too focused on the magic component itself. One of those ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ things, I guess.” Eric sounded rueful. “But with a mass spec, we might also be able to isolate the shifter gene…maybe even genes for our specific breeds…”
“What, so we could attempt to genetically engineer dragons?” I asked, attempting to ignore the renewed swirling emotions over the babies I carried. Giving my head a quick shake, I pinned my brother with a pointed stare. “Eugenics is a dangerous path to travel down, Eric.”
“It’s just a theory,” he defended, then turned his chair to face me fully, causing me to take a couple of steps back. “But, while we’re on the topic, how are you feeling? And I mean really.”
“I am fine.”
His blonde eyebrows tilted inwards as his eyes narrowed. “Bran, come on. I know you’re going to love your kids no matter what, but some part of you was desperately hoping for a dragon and, unless our species has evolved significantly…”
“Perhaps it has,” I mused, considering all the other changes we had become aware of over time. “Female alphas exist now, where we have no record of them doing so before. Perhaps the magic itself has changed and evolved.”
Sitting back in his chair, Eric observed me in silence for a moment. “That is a valid point. But, Bee, the likelihood—”
“I am aware.” Swiftly cutting him off, I sat in the armchair beside his desk; the one he had his patients sit in during their appointments. “And I will admit I was irrationally upset at first. I feel terrible for it. These babies” —I placed my hand over the gravid swell of my abdomen— “are a dream come true for me regardless of their breed of shifter. I momentarily lost sight of that, and I am struggling to forgive myself for the lapse.”
“We all want to save our kind,” Eric told me softly. “It’s okay to want both the kids and to bring more dragons into the world. You’re not a bad person because you’re only getting half of that this time around.”
“The most selfish half,” I muttered, then cocked my head. “This time?”
Eric snorted and fiddled with the edge of the notepad sitting on the desk in front of him. “Please. Tell me that you and that alpha of yours aren’t going to be taking advantage of every single heat you have once these babies are born. You’re going to overrun this town with your babies.”
“I am going to enjoy trying,” I agreed, a thrum of arousal traveling through my veins. “But I am middle-aged. Who knows how many viable heat cycles I even have left in me. I met Micah after I had implanted the embryos, so I have not even experienced one yet.”
“It’s a good thing we’re both men of science, then,” my brother grinned. “We’ll work it out, Bran, I promise. This is the most hope and advancement we’ve had in hundreds of years, and I think we’re onto something with our new theories.”
“I do, too,” I glanced around his little office, with its examination bed, desk and computer, posters of anatomy and a bookshelf containing pull apart models of various organs, and I sighed. “We are going to have to move the clinic if you want to get a mass spectrometer in here.”
“I think we’ve outgrown this place anyway,” Eric agreed. “I’ve asked Sage to reach out to some of his friends in the building industry. If we manage to crack the code on this magic and pheromones thing, we’re going to need a dedicated hospital space and more housing. Plus,” his gaze softened and dropped to my belly again, “we need to get those incubators ready just in case.”
That was a sobering reminder that I had more important things to worry about than my babies’ species.
“When can we break ground on a new facility?”