Page 5 of His Unicorn Alpha
I swallowed and looked out the window at the grays and tans of the buildings swishing by as the cab weaved through traffic. “Mom…”
“The last time you sounded even close to happy was when you visited your alpha friend for his wedding a few months back. Oh, I got such good vibes from the universe while you were there…”
“I called you while I was drunk, Mom. It wasn’t good vibes; it was too much tequila.”
This time, the cabbie snorted, then averted his gaze when I caught his eye in the mirror and frowned.
I’m so glad I can provide someone with amusement today.
“I know what I felt, sweetheart,” she dismissed me. “And I know you’re not happy now, either.”
I never really bought into my mother’s hippy-dippy ‘in tune with the universe’ crap. I believed in magic to some extent —I was a man who turned into a horse at will, after all— but that was just a step too far. Still, I played along with her because it made her happy and it wasn’t hurting anyone.
The conversation in the cab was no different. I sighed. “Fine. I’m feeling…” I searched for the right word and could only come up with: “unsettled, I guess.” And she was right: the last time I felt content and settled had been at Beck’s wedding months earlier.
“I knew it!”
“Mom…”
“Do me a favor, baby. Call your friends. Go visit them. I’m getting the feeling you’re supposed to be there.”
Shoulders slumping, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to take a little holiday. Maybe I’d sublet my room and see if staying in a small-town for a couple of months might be enough to fix whatever misguided notion my instincts —and my mother and heruniverse— were stuck on.
“Fine, Mom, I’ll go. But I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ when it’s a bust.”
“And I reserve the right to say it when it turns out thatI’mright.” She paused to blow air-kisses down the line. “Mwah, baby. I love you. Let me know when you get there safe and sound.”
We said our goodbyes and I sat in awkward silence for the remaining few minutes of my car ride. When the cab pulled up to the curb and I paid, the driver turned in his seat and extended a card with his number.
He smirked and shrugged. “I’m not looking for anything serious, either,” he said, adding, “and I get it: my Mom’s Jewish. The guilt is strong in that one.”
I took the card, sharing a chuckle of commiseration. The guy was cute, with dark curly hair and eyes that glimmered with mirth, but he was far too young for me.
Because that was my other issue: I had a type. It was just a pity that even the older men I’d dated had gotten bored of me for one reason or another.
I was destined for singledom and Grindr hook-ups.
I tucked the card into my jeans pocket as I climbed out of the cab with my makeup kit, reminding myself that, in the end, beggars couldn’t be choosy.
My inner shifter huffed and my skin prickled with renewed unease. Apparently, he disagreed with my life choices more and more with each passing day.
“Fine,” I muttered to myself, feeling like an idiot, “I’ll text Beck.”
Oddly, that seemed to settle my inner beast.
Weird.
Chapter Three
Iunderestimated how draining pregnancy might be for a middle-aged shifter, and I quite literally had nobody to blame but myself. The alpha —who wasn’t an alpha yet— hadn’t even touched me. He’d donated his genetic material to science, and I’d abused his trust in us by implanting the resulting viable embryos in my womb. With my hormones running rampant, I struggled with nearly crippling guilt over that fact.
However, I was pregnant.
I was elated to be pregnant.
Me. A dragon omega.Pregnant.
Yes, there was a chance that the embryos I carried might take after their alpha parent and be born horse shifters instead of dragons, but even so, it meant that somewhere in their DNA, dragon genes would carry on. Maybe somewhere down the line, they might find mates also with recessive dragon genes and then spawn a new generation of dragon shifters after all.
