Page 44 of His Unicorn Alpha
The backs of his wings were scaled, but underneath was almost leathery. I wanted to run my hands over the smooth, inviting surface, but with his height and mass, I was way too short to reach.
One day,I told myself, running my palms over the scales I could reach on his arm.
When he dipped his head, bringing his eye down to my level, I realized that the diameter of his eyeball was only a little smaller than I was tall. I grinned at him and patted his muzzle.
“You are gorgeous, Bran,” I murmured in awe, and I’m almost certain he purred. Then shifted his head and nudged me with his nose, pushing me backwards.
“What?” I asked him, even though he couldn’t answer.
He snorted, and warm air blew up dust from the ground at my feet. Lifting his claw, Brandt pointed at his chest, then ran the same talon from the top of my head to my feet.
It still took me a moment to understand. “Oh! My turn to shift. Got it.”
He snorted again and nodded.
“I’m telling you, my horse form iswayless impressive.” I repeated my earlier argument. “I probably should have gone first.”
The dragon in front of me let out a grumbly, growly sound which I read as irritation. Some people might have thought it was scary, but I just thought it was adorable.
“Okay, okay,” I whipped my shirt off, “I’m doing it.”
I turned my back on Eric and removed the rest of my clothes, then forced my shift as quickly as possible.
It felt…strange.
When Brandt had shifted, I had focused on the sensations through the bond in awe. His form was so different to mine,and so feeling him grow and contort and sprout wings had been something completely new to me.
But my own shift, which I thought I knew better than the back of my hand, felt somewhat new, too. Not completely. My shape was still fundamentally the same. But…it kept going, tugging and contorting my back and, strangely, my forehead in ways that felt kind of reminiscent of Brandt’s shift.
Through our bond, I felt a jolt of deep, intense shock, and it made me look up at my mate. His dragon eyes were wide with human levels of wonder, and he let out another huff of warm air as he took a couple of lumbering steps backward.
I brayed at him, wishing I could demand an answer for his intense surprise —surely he had seen a simple horse before— and I stomped my front hooves in the dirt, kicking up another cloud of dust.
“Holy shit,” I turned at the sound of Eric’s awed declaration. “Micah…do you feel anything different?”
I rolled my eyes as best I could and whinnied, because how the hell did he expect me to answer? Then I remembered I could still nod and if I’d been in my human form, I would have facepalmed. Chuffing, I nodded at him.
He grinned at me, and it seemed almost manic. “You’re…actually, no, hang on.” He pulled out his phone and took a photo of me, then hurried forward, tilting the screen so I could see it.
What the actual fuck?
I let out a startled squeal and reeled backwards, suddenly feeling uncoordinated in a way that I hadn’t since my first childhood shifts. My long legs felt gangly as if I was a foal, and I stumbled away from the strange thing I had just seen.
“Whoa,” Eric shoved his phone back into his pocket and held both hands up to placate me as I reared back onto my hindquarters, kicking at the air with my front legs. “Calm down. It’s okay. Really. It’s okay.”
How?I wanted to demand, but I didn’t have the ability to speak, what with being shifted and all.How is it okay?
Because the photo he had shown me hadn’t been of my usual horse form. No: the creature in the photo had wings and a horn.
A unicorn.
What the hell was happening to me?
Chapter Fifteen
As I watched my beautiful mate rear back with confusion and fear —emotions which resonated deep inside my chest and took my breath away— I hurriedly shifted back into my human form and rushed to him.
As I neared, I took in every detail that I could. His coat was an almost metallic golden color, like the rarest of the Akhal-Teke breed of horses, and the color extended to the sleek wings tucked against his flank. He had long, elegant legs and what appeared to be a silky-smooth mane in a shimmering golden-white color. But it was the metallic gold unicorn horn in the middle of his forehead, perfectly twirled and tapered to a deadly sharp point at the end, which stood out the most.
