Page 46 of His Unicorn Alpha
“I will be with you,” I told him gently. “I won’t allow anything to happen to you.”
On some level, a voice at the back of my head said that he had no reason to trust me. I had not yet earned his trust, not so soon at any rate. However, my mate proved that voice wrong, letting out a sigh before he bowed his head in obvious acquiescence.
“We will not go too high or too fast,” I promised him, backing away so that I could shift in return.
He neighed at me and stamped his hooves again, stretching out his wings as he gave them what I could only describe as an experimental shake.
“It will come naturally,” I told him, assuming he was making a point of not knowing how to fly. “I will attempt to share through the bond what I feel when I take flight, but your instincts should take over.”
There were no more disgruntled sounds, so I backed away and then shifted back into my dragon form. I did not feel too drained, and I made a note to report as much to Eric, as much as it irritated me that I had become his lab rat. Still, it would helpus to treat our pack’s shifters, and to share the knowledge with others like us around the world.
With the shift completed, I looked down at my mate and purred with appreciation. My dragon had never seen anything as perfect. Even though our size difference was ridiculous, that was my alpha. My mate. And he was glorious.
Forcing myself to concentrate on what usually came naturally, I flexed my wings for flight. Leaping from the ground, I beat my wings to create thrust, working the muscles until I was soaring through the air, gliding and only flapping when necessary. I focused on sending the entire process through the connection I shared with Micah, and I paired it with encouragement.
Then I circled the field, watching with bated breath.
At first, Micah attempted to repeat my actions. His equine form reared back on its hind legs and leaped, beating its wings…only to land without any lift off. He gave it a few tries, all with the same results, before Eric moved towards him. I assumed my brother was giving my mate some kind of pep talk or advice, but from my altitude, I could not hear what he said.
But I felt a wave of determination emanating from the bond before Micah’s golden form turned around and galloped through the field. I followed from above, and felt a surge of pride for him as he sprang forward during his run into the wind, spreading his wings and finally gaining the lift and thrust he had been missing before.
I swooped down to meet him, giving him space to get his bearings, but remaining close enough that I could intervene as promised should anything go wrong.
At first, the emotions that traveled through the bond were shock and awe, followed by fear as he rose higher and higher into the air, leaving the ground far behind us. But, as his wings slowed their frantic beating and began to glide and flap slowly in the same relaxed pattern as my own, the fear dissipated.
His coat and horn reflected the sun’s rays as he experimented with dipping and diving along currents of air. Had I been human, I would have whooped as I joined him, twirling around his smaller form as he became more confident with his abilities.
Joy tinted with disbelief filtered through the bond, and I was certain he could feel my echoing enjoyment and amusement, too. Never in my wildest dreams had I dared to believe that my mate —my alpha— would have the capacity to join me in flight.
I lost track of time as we meandered through the sky above Beck’s farmland, but movement below us caught my eye. Focusing, I smothered a dragonly sigh at the sight of my brother waving us down.
Making certain that Micah was following me, I began a lazy descent, then landed not far from where I had taken flight. I cast my gaze back up to the sky to watch as my mate also came in for a landing, his hooves touching the ground so he could canter then trot to a stop. He made the movement seem effortless, as though he had been flying his entire life.
“Sorry to cut that short,” Eric apologized as we shifted back to our human forms. “But I really do have appointments to get to, and I havesomany questions…”
“Yeah, well,” Micah breathed heavily as he hastily tugged on his underwear, sounding as if he had been running a marathon, “you know where we, uh, Brandt lives. You could have come knocking later. Or, better yet, texted.”
Eric shrugged. “I could have, but this way I can take new blood samples.” His eyes lit up. “I’d like to take them from you in shifted form, too, if possible.”
“Does it have to be right now?” I asked him, which earned me a baleful glare.
“Aren’t you itching to get answers too?”
I was actually itching to get my alpha back into bed, but I did not think Eric would appreciate that answer, so I sighed. “Isuppose I would like to do some research on the existence of unicorns.” I cast Micah an apologetic glance. “We are starting from scratch when it comes to knowledge of your kind.”
“My kind,” he repeated. “I’m a horse. That…the wings and the horn and the super shiny gold coat? That’s not my usual form. I mean, I’ve always been a golden color…but not like that.”
“Perhaps,” Eric postulated, “you’re not all that different to the other alphas after all. I mean, yeah, you knew you were a shifter…but your alpha is an entirely different breed which you never knew about, much like they didn’t know they could shift at all.” He pulled out his phone to type notes. “I wish we had some sort of baseline reading of the others’ blood prior to their alphas making an appearance. I know we have yours,” he looked up at Micah briefly before burying his nose in his screen again, “but, for obvious reasons, we don’t have any of the others on file.”
“And they can’t contact their doctors from before they shifted?”
Eric’s head shot up and he met my wide-eyed stare before slowly turning back to Micah. “I never even thought of that.” Before Micah could say anything more, Eric flung himself into his arms and kissed his cheek. “You’re brilliant!”
Pausing with my shorts halfway up my legs, I growled.
“Scales, sugar,” Micah extricated himself from my brother’s grasp and closed the space between us, cupping my jaw. I shuddered as he ran his thumb over the side of my face. “You’re the only omega for me.”
“Sorry,” Eric sounded genuinely apologetic. “I keep forgetting how possessive pregnant omegas can be. Especially in the early days of their bond forming.”
