Page 51 of His Unicorn Alpha
Laughing softly, I shook my head and rolled carefully onto my side to face him, heedless of the mess I was making on the bedding. “I will never get used to how good bonded sex is,” I informed him. “It is like you know exactly what to do and say to make every experience…” I searched for the right word.
“Mind-blowing?” he offered playfully. “World-rocking? Life-changing?”
Snorting, I nodded, already feeling sleepy from the effects of a strong orgasm. “All of the above.”
“I’m gonna need another shower,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.
My eyes shut of their own accord, and I leaned into the touch. “Mmhmm.”
He chuckled, and his fingers continued to stroke over my scalp. “Sleep, sweetheart. We’ll clean up later.”
“At what point was someone going to tell me we were researching unicorns because my big brother got knocked up by one?” Sage’s voice demanded from the lab’s doorway.
I dropped the report I was working on and swiveled my chair around to face him. My younger brother, the middle child between Eric and I, smiled broadly at me. He was as physically different to me as Eric, but he looked nothing like our youngest sibling, either. Tall, almost lanky in his leanness, and with long, vibrant red hair, Sage was the most stereotypical omega of the three of us, appearance wise. His eyes were a piercing bright blue, and he must have been spending more time in the sun than usual, because his skin was almost brown with the covering of freckles over his arms and face.
“Sage,” I greeted with a wide smile, “it is good to see you.”
It had been months since he and Dexter had left on their last magic-finding mission. I hadn’t realized how close we had become since moving to Shifters Sanctuary until he was no longer here. We kept in touch via text messages and the occasional phone call, but that did not compare to being able to speak to him in person.
“So, we’re just not going to address the elephant-sized baby bump in the room, then?” he teased.
“We are,” I assured him, and pushed out of my chair with a muffled groan. Ever since my belly had ‘popped’ two weeks earlier, it felt as though it had doubled in size. The strain the distention was putting on my back was almost ridiculous. “However, let me say hello properly first.”
He eyed my belly with caution as I crossed the space between us, then made a soft ‘oh’ sound as I wrapped my arms around him and brought him in for a hug.
“Jesus,” he muttered as we pulled apart, looking down at my stomach with equal parts awe and horror, “you’rehuge, Bran.”
“Be thankful that my hormones are behaving today. Yesterday, that comment would have set off a stupid amount of tears.” I cocked my head and sighed. “And I might have thrown a chair at you, too.”
“Consider me warned, then,” he smiled, still looking down between us. “Eric said you’re having triplets?”
“It was nice of him to deliver all my news for me,” I griped with no small degree of sarcasm.
Sage snorted. “You know Eric; he always has to be the center of attention.”
“Youngest child syndrome,” I sighed. “He’s such a brat.”
“Still, I kind of appreciated the head’s up. If I’d walked in here and seen you without the warning, I might have had a heart attack.” Sage accompanied the gentle rebuke with a push to my shoulder. “What’s with not telling me before now?”
“I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Okay…but you’re, what, five months in? What would you have done if I didn’t come back before they were born? Waited to throw three babies at me and be all ‘congratulations, Sage, you’re an uncle!’?”
“And you call Eric the dramatic one,” I grumbled, rubbing at my aching back. Then I shrugged and exhaled. “Honestly? I do not know. It wasn’t the most traditional conception and…I suppose I was trying to avoid your disappointment for as long as possible.”
“Yeah,” he guided me back to my desk and helped me into my seat, the corners of his lips lifting at my sigh of relief, “Eric told me you helped yourself to research materials.” He leaned his bony ass on the edge of my desk and crossed his long legs at the ankle, gripping the edge of the desk with his palms as he drummed out a random beat on the underside with his fingertips. “I asked him if he could blame you.”
“You…what? Really?”
“Come on, Bee. It’s me. I want kids as badly as you do. I would have done the same thing, given half a chance.” He chewed his bottom lip. “Could you…” Pausing, he cleared his throat and leaned down to whisper. “If my eggs ever do their thing in your petri dishes, can you tell me? Please?”
I blinked back at him, stunned. “Eric would kill me.”
Sage cast his gaze to my belly again. I recognized the longing and heartache on his face. It matched my own, or at least the way I had felt before Micah’s sperm had fertilized my eggs. How could I deny him the happiness that I had found, even hypothetically?
“Of course,” I said softly, without needing to hear him beg. “I will tell you.”
“This is why you’re my favorite brother,” he replied, straightening back up from his stooped position. Despite the playfulness of his tone, he wiped at his eyes with the knuckle of his index finger, and I had to swallow back tears of my own.
