Page 57 of His Unicorn Alpha
“I am aware.” Swiftly cutting him off, I sat in the armchair beside his desk; the one he had his patients sit in during their appointments. “And I will admit I was irrationally upset at first. I feel terrible for it. These babies” —I placed my hand over the gravid swell of my abdomen— “are a dream come true for me regardless of their breed of shifter. I momentarily lost sight of that, and I am struggling to forgive myself for the lapse.”
“We all want to save our kind,” Eric told me softly. “It’s okay to want both the kidsandto bring more dragons into the world. You’re not a bad person because you’re only getting half of that this time around.”
“The most selfish half,” I muttered, then cocked my head. “This time?”
Eric snorted and fiddled with the edge of the notepad sitting on the desk in front of him. “Please. Tell me that you and that alpha of yours aren’t going to be taking advantage of every single heat you have once these babies are born. You’re going to overrun this town with your babies.”
“I am going to enjoy trying,” I agreed, a thrum of arousal traveling through my veins. “But I am middle-aged. Who knows how many viable heat cycles I even have left in me. I met Micah after I had implanted the embryos, so I have not even experiencedoneyet.”
“It’s a good thing we’re both men of science, then,” my brother grinned. “We’ll work it out, Bran, I promise. This is the most hope and advancement we’ve had in hundreds of years, and I think we’re onto something with our new theories.”
“I do, too,” I glanced around his little office, with its examination bed, desk and computer, posters of anatomy and a bookshelf containing pull apart models of various organs, and I sighed. “We are going to have to move the clinic if you want to get a mass spectrometer in here.”
“I think we’ve outgrown this place anyway,” Eric agreed. “I’ve asked Sage to reach out to some of his friends in the building industry. If we manage to crack the code on this magic and pheromones thing, we’re going to need a dedicated hospital space and more housing. Plus,” his gaze softened and dropped to my belly again, “we need to get those incubators ready just in case.”
That was a sobering reminder that I had more important things to worry about than my babies’ species.
“When can we break ground on a new facility?”
Chapter Twenty
“Darling, come quick!”
At Brandt’s excited call from the couch in the living room, I just about dropped the glasses I had pulled from the dishwasher to put away in their proper place. Hastily placing the glasses on the counter, I rushed across the open-living-style space and practically skidded to a stop in front of him.
“What’s up?”
Without speaking, my mate reached for my hand and yanked it to his belly. I felt the movement —the gentle, almost bubbling tapping— beneath my palm almost instantly.
“Oh my god,” I exhaled, my gaze glued to my hand, as if I could see through it and Brandt’s skin and to the babies themselves. “Oh,wow.”
Brandt had been feeling them move around inside him for a few weeks, but this was the first time they had been detectable from the outside. I was thrilled that their timing meant I got to be the first person to experience it, and I was also…kind of terrified.
It was yet more proof that we were going to be parents. ThatIwas going to be a parent. The weeks were speeding forward, time passing so fast that it felt like all I had to do was blink and our girls would be here.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t excited about them, because I was. I had zero regrets about bonding with Brandt and locking myself into the future he had tried to give me a free pass from. But as the reality of what was coming started to dawn on me,threebabies felt like a scary undertaking.
We had set up their nursery in the spare room across the hall from the main bedroom, and as I had put the cribs together (while Brandt had grumped from the plush rocking chair because I had insisted that the manual labor be my domain), it had started to dawn on me how much work they would be.
Those three white cribs, in a room painted in pastel shades of the rainbow, were a symbol of the sleepless nights coming our way. Of countless diaper changes. Of crying, and spit-up…and all the other not-so-fun stuff Beck grizzled about.
Brandt and I were still probably going to hire help, because we were in the fortunate position that he was a dragon with hundreds of years of savings and investments behind him, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to be hands-on dads.
It was just that, as their arrival loomed closer, I was starting to worry that I had no actual idea what I was doing.
Hanging out with Lena and Brandi’s newborn twins —boys they had named Peter and Benjamin, which the rest of the pack teased them about on account of being rabbit shifters— only made my insecurities about my abilities increase. It turned out that newborns were so much smaller than any other babies I had previously held. Their little bodies were solid, but tiny and squirmy and, oh Gods, what if I dropped one? And changing them? Yeah…I hadn’t been prepared for newborn diapers.
The movement beneath my palm faded away and I tried not to feel too disappointed, but Brandt grabbed my wrist and moved my hand to the other side of his belly. The tapping there felt a little stronger. I grinned and looked up at him. “Do you think they’re having a dance party in there?”
He chuckled and nodded. “Or perhaps fighting like Beck and Ollie’s children.”
I grimaced. “I hope they’re not as violent with each other. I love Beck’s kids, but they’re little demons unless you keep them separated.”
“Two little alphas.” Brandt said, adding, “Not that I truly believe there is a personality difference between alphas, betas, and omegas, just as I do not believe boys are inherently more rough and tumble than girls. It just amuses me that they are both such dominant little creatures.”
“No wonder Beck’s so afraid of having more kids,” I laughed. “Those two are going to turn him prematurely gray.”
“Hey,” Brandt pouted down at me, “what is wrong with turning gray?” He turned his head to the side and gestured at the silver streaks that never failed to make my stomach flip and my cock twitch.
