Page 7 of His Unicorn Alpha (Shifters Sanctuary #3)

“ W hat’s going on?” Beck asked as Eric shoved me forcibly into the meeting room with the two alphas.

The very second I had finished telling him what I had done, he had held up his index finger, instructing me to wait, and he had called the Pack Alpha and requested an audience with him and the other alphas.

I could hear Beck’s confused response that Brandi and Lena were not available, which was unsurprising considering how close Lena’s due date was, but that he would call Rex to meet us at the house.

Then Eric had thanked him, ended the call, and had finally addressed me. He had been berating me for my selfishness ever since.

If it had been anyone else on the receiving end of his vitriol, I might have been impressed. Of the three of us —myself, Sage and Eric— Eric was the least likely to lose his temper so completely.

It turned out that breaking scientific and medical oaths was his trigger.

In the Alpha’s meeting room, Eric pointed to a chair at the long table and barked, “Sit.”

Aware of Beckett and Rex exchanging raised eyebrowed looks, I did as I was told.

Eric waved his hand in a sweeping gesture towards Beck and Rex, who were both leaning casually against the buffet unit running along the opposite wall from the door. They straightened as my brother demanded, “Tell them. Tell them what you’ve done.”

I had known Eric would be disappointed in me, but I had hoped that, as a dragon shifter also desperately trying to save our species, he might have some empathy.

I’d been wrong.

It hurt that he didn’t see it at all from my perspective. That he wasn’t even remotely supportive or even excited.

I also knew that the upset I was feeling over that realization was mostly hormonal. As were the tears that blurred my vision. Still, I couldn’t stop them.

“Jesus, Weldman,” Beck snapped, and I flinched from the harsh rebuke until I realized that he was glaring at Eric as he rounded the table to stand between the two of us, “he’s clearly upset. Why are you—”

“He’s pregnant, Beckett,” Eric announced, despite his insistence that I tell them what I had done myself.

“Wait,” Rex stepped forward, cocking his head, excitement building in his voice, “does that mean there’s another alpha ’round here? Another dragon?” Then he frowned. “And why is that a bad thing? Unless…” His blue eyes widened with horror. “You don’t think one of us…”

“No,” I interrupted, shaking my head and bringing their attention my way. I felt miserable. The one person I had hoped would at least somewhat understand what I had done had reacted with far more anger than I had anticipated. And if Eric was so upset with me, I doubted I would get a gentler reaction from either of the alphas.

Perhaps I should have listened to Damon after all. Perhaps I should have taken a vacation and given birth to my children in private. Perhaps I should have kept them a secret from the entire world, including my family and the pack I had come to think of as home.

No. That would have been wrong and I knew it. I had known from the outset that my actions would have consequences. I had just hoped that Eric would understand. That he would be on my side, despite his misgivings.

It would break my heart if Sage also hated me for what I’d done.

“No?” Rex repeated. “No what, exactly?”

I looked up at him, knowing my expression was pitiful. For all of the hundreds of years that separated us, I considered Rex one of my closer friends in this pack. He was Damon’s mate, and we spent a lot of time together socially. It was going to hurt to have him loathe me for my choices, too. Not that I didn’t deserve it.

Licking my lips, I told him, “No, Eric knows it wasn’t either of you, nor was it Brandi. But,” I steeled myself and cupped the small swell of my belly gently, taking strength from the conviction that I had made the right choice even if it hadn’t been the ethical one, “there isn’t any other alpha.”

Both Beck and Rex frowned. Beck gently pushed Eric further away so he could sit on the edge of the table in front of me. “Explain,” he urged, but his tone wasn’t accusatory like Eric’s had been. I didn’t know if that was better or worse.

I picked at my thumbnail, unable to look him in the eye. “You know about the compatibility tests we have been running, attempting to fertilize donated ovum with sperm samples from potential alphas.”

“Yeah?”

I swallowed. “A couple of months ago, I discovered that we had a successful match. Viable, fertilized eggs.” Licking my lips, I finally dared to meet his dark gaze. “ My eggs.”

His eyes widened almost comically, while Rex sucked in a breath and murmured, “Oh boy.”

“I…you must understand, we don’t have the facilities to store fertilized ovum. They would either be destroyed or—”

“Or you could turkey baste ’em,” Rex finished for me. “Which is what you did.”

“I used a catheter and the ultrasound machine to ensure my success, but…yes. I…I knew it was wrong, but—”

“It was a breach of trust, Brandt!” Eric burst out, unable to hold his tongue any longer. He began pacing the room, his arms flailing wildly, repeating the things he had already yelled at me at least five or six times already. “We made promises to each and every person who donated their samples. We specifically swore that if matches were found, we wouldn’t impregnate anyone. Do you really think anyone is going to trust us going forward once news of this gets out? Do you really think our science won’t be questioned? Our research?”

“They were my babies !” I finally snapped back at him, slamming my fist on the polished timber of the tabletop beside Beck’s leg. “I have lived hundreds of years dreaming of being a father, wanting nothing more than to carry my own children and knowing it was nothing more than a pipedream and there they were.” My voice cracked as I recalled the hope that had swelled inside me. The realization that my hopes were not futile or impossible after all. “My three precious little embryos. My babies.”

“But they weren’t just yours,” Eric snapped, storming back to my side as he raised his voice in anger. “They’re fifty percent someone else’s and you took that choice from him. You made that decision for him. Selfishly.”

I curled around my belly as he loomed over me. Beck slid off the table and insinuated himself between us once more.

“Enough!” he cried, and I flinched again. “Eric’s right,” he spoke again after a moment, but his voice was gentle and full of the empathy I wished I could have heard from my brother himself. “What you did definitely broke the promises you made. However, I know you’re a species on the edge of extinction and I understand why you would choose to take the chance in front of you. But why not reach out to the potential alpha?”

Once I answered that question, I doubted he would sound so understanding for much longer. Micah was his friend. His former found family. Not only had I broken the Pack Alpha’s trust, I had also done the unimaginable to his friend.

“He wasn’t here. He’s not a member of the pack and I didn’t want to risk the viability of the embryos on time spent attempting to contact him. It was only a small window of time and…” I hung my head, “I was selfish, Alpha.”

“ Ugh ,” Beck groaned. “Stop that. I’m your friend, Brandt, not your…overlord.”

Rex snorted and repeated “Overlord” with a significant degree of amusement, his Texan accent curling around the word pleasantly.

“Shut up,” Beck directed at him with a smile in his voice. “You all know this Pack Alpha thing makes me uncomfortable.”

“But that’s why I brought him here,” Eric cut back in effusively. “What he’s done is...well, it reflects badly on our research. On what we’re trying to achieve for shifters and potential alphas everywhere. You’re our Alpha. You get to decide how to handle this.”

“I understand that,” Beckett was back to sounding reasonable but serious, “but this isn’t some super simple ‘right vs wrong’ issue. There are complex emotions involved, too, and I’m not a dictator.”

“Okay,” I watched as my brother nodded, then he met my gaze and gestured towards Beckett again. “Tell him who you’ve involved without consent, B.”

“Micah Hawthorne,” I admitted, watching as the Alpha blinked and processed my confession.

He coughed. “What?!”

“Micah?” Rex repeated, then looked at Eric. “ Micah , Micah? As in, Beck’s beta friend? That Micah? The one stayin’ here right now?”

“That Micah,” Eric nodded.

“Well,” Rex licked his lips, “that complicates things some more, doesn’t it?”

Beck was silent for a long moment. Eventually, he looked me in the eye and, directing his words at the others, said, “Can Brandt and I have the room, please?” As Eric and Rex moved to leave, he added, “And don’t say anything to anyone else. Especially not Micah. That’s up to Brandt and we’re not taking that from him.” He narrowed his gaze at Eric. “Understood?”

Eric held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Okay, okay. Yes. Understood.”

I loved my brother, but he often got tunnel vision when it came to things he was passionate about. To some extent, it could be argued that I was the same. I had underestimated his passion for his research, just as he had underestimated the lengths I would go to for my children.

After he and Rex left, with Rex patting my shoulder and squeezing it reassuringly on his way out, Beck continued to stare at me in silence.

It was unnerving.

Despite my advanced age, I felt like an errant schoolboy.

I fidgeted, and, unable to take the tense silence any longer, said, “I had no idea if it was a fluke or something more. But…they were my embryos and I…I couldn’t…” The thought of destroying them —of letting them waste away in that petri dish, of losing them— had me curling my arm protectively around my abdomen once more. Tears clogged my throat, making my voice thick and gruff. “I know it was wrong. I know that he will hate me. And when he was only an abstract idea that was fine. You and Sandy had both described him as someone who would never willingly stay in a small town or in our pack and I thought…” I trailed off, shaking my head.

I didn’t need to tell him that I had planned on raising my children without ever having to worry about explaining myself to the unwitting sperm donor. Shakily, the rest of my confession bubbled up, and out spilled the fears which had been brewing ever since I had looked into Micah’s eyes a few days earlier.

“But now I believe that it was not an improbable fluke. I think…I think he is my compatible mate. Perhaps even my potential alpha. And he has every reason to loathe me now.”

The hold I had on my tenuous emotions slipped and tears trickled down my cheeks. I hung my head, trying to at least keep the sobs contained. It was largely hormonal, but also my emotional reaction to the reality of what my actions had cost me.

My mate. My alpha .

From where he was still seated on the table, Beck sighed heavily, then I heard him move. The chair beside mine rolled towards me and then dipped as he sat in it. With his hand on my back, he patted consolingly.

“For the record,” he said after I had calmed somewhat, “I don’t think Micah has the capacity to hate anyone. He’s always been pretty chill. But this is…something else.”

Swallowing roughly, I nodded. “I know.”

“And I’m caught in a pretty tight spot here because he’s one of my best friends and you…well, I owe you my life, Bran.”

I shook my head and finally forced myself to look him in the eye again. “We were never going to allow the zealots to harm you. You owe me nothing for doing the right thing when you were taken.”

“You still saved me,” he argued. “And you made sure I was back here for Ollie as he gave birth. I—” Stopping suddenly, he gave me a sharp look. “Did you say children? Plural?”

Throat working convulsively again, I nodded.

“Twins?”

I shook my head.

He paled.

“More than twins?”

“Three,” I acknowledged, shifting my palm over my bump. “Triplets. I couldn’t…”

How was I supposed to explain that I couldn’t choose to save only one or two of the fertilized ovum? That the very idea hurt my heart and made my stomach roil?

“Hey, shh,” I hadn’t realized I was breathing heavily, on the verge of an anxiety attack, until Beck’s hand began rubbing soothing circles over my back. “It’s okay. I’m not pissed, Brandt, and Micah…well, I think this might give him a heart attack, but—”

“I don’t expect anything from him.” I don’t know why I said it, but I needed Beck to understand that I wasn’t trying to…what was it the humans said?...baby trap his friend. “He…he can pretend they don’t exist. I have centuries of savings, and—”

“If he’s your mate, that’s not going to make a difference. The way I felt after I met Ollie…” He paused and rolled his shoulders, then shook his entire body as if throwing off an uncomfortable feeling. “Are you feeling drawn to him? Like…a desperate need to find him and, uh, be with him?”

“Yes…and no. It’s...strange. For you and Ollie, I know your meeting set off his heat and your rutting instincts. But I am already pregnant, so going into heat is unlikely.” I inhaled after I said it, realizing it was the first time I’d said the words out loud, despite thinking them many times over. I cupped my belly and softly repeated, “I am pregnant.”

“Yeah, that’s still a mindfuck,” Beck chuckled lightly. “You’re a brave man going for triplets. I still get palpitations at the thought of adding even one new one on top of our two little gremlins, and they’re becoming kind of self-sufficient. Sometimes.”

“I’ve always dreamed of having children,” I responded in the same, quiet, near-reverent tone as when I’d repeated myself moments earlier. “As many as I could. Not just because of our species being close to extinction, either. But because…I felt born to it, you know? I have yearned to carry my own young since I was barely considered an adult myself.”

“Well, that explains the impulse decision even more, doesn’t it?” I didn’t bother answering and, after a beat, he mused, “Micah is a beta. And a horse. Both of those things are so different to everything else we’ve experienced with the locked alpha stuff…”

“I know,” I dropped my chin. “These children may not even be dragons. But I will love them fiercely no matter what.”

He was silent again. Then his tone was low and serious as he said, “You have to tell him, you know that. And if he’s feeling the same pull towards you that I did when I met Ollie…”

I nodded. “I’ve already broken his trust. And I have put you in an awkward position should he demand some kind of restitution through pack law.”

“I’m telling you, Micah’s not like that. I mean, I can’t say for sure that this isn’t going to freak him out…but he’s got a leg up on me, seeing as he’s already a shifter and the concept of alphas and omegas isn’t new to him. Learning that he might be an alpha himself, on the other hand…”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I cautioned, though I couldn’t imagine that a stock standard horse beta could impregnate a dragon omega. That made zero sense. But then, neither did an alpha horse shifter, either. Unless he had recessive dragon genes?

But how could such a thing be possible? Until now, we had theorized that mixed matings between shifters was unlikely. Matings with humans, resulting in human children with recessive genes, on the other hand…

I was getting lost in hypothesizing.

“Well, we’re not going to get answers by hiding in here.” Beck pushed to his feet. “I’m going to talk to Eric. I’m sure, once he calms down, he’ll be excited to have new data and theories to work with. In the meantime, I’m going to find Micah and send him in here so you two can meet properly. You don’t have to tell him today, but you know he deserves to know soon, and he does deserve to hear the whole story from you.”

I was back to feeling like a chastened schoolboy caught vandalizing school property or something to that effect. I chewed on my bottom lip and nodded. “This is why you’re a good Pack Alpha, Beckett,” I told him as he reached the door. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged and gave me a lopsided grin, “I told you a couple of years ago: I’ve got your back, Bran. No matter what.” Then he paused and scrunched his nose. “But that doesn’t extend to babysitting. You’re on your own for that.”

For the first time in weeks, I laughed loudly and freely.

It hadn’t happened quite the way I had planned, but my secret was mostly revealed. I could focus on the future instead of hiding, and I swore that I would do whatever I could to rebuild my brother’s —and my pack’s— trust in me.